The Rise of the Superbugs
This process explains how bacteria can gain traits—like antibiotic resistance—from other bacteria, rather than inheriting them from parent cells.
What is bacterial gene transfer?
This outermost part of the ear funnels sound waves into the ear canal.
What is the pinna?
This medical innovation has dramatically reduced or eliminated diseases like polio, measles, and smallpox worldwide.
What is Vaccination?
These vaccines use a weakened form of a pathogen that still triggers immunity but doesn’t cause disease in healthy people.
What are live attenuated vaccines?
This circular piece of bacterial DNA is commonly used as a vector to carry foreign genes in recombinant DNA technology.
What is a plasmid?
Besides acquiring DNA from other bacteria, this natural process, driven by random mutations, can also give rise to antibiotic resistance.
What is spontaneous mutation?
This type of hearing loss is caused by damage to the inner ear or auditory nerve.
What is sensorineural hearing loss?
Vaccines help the immune system by stimulating the production of these “memory” cells that recognize pathogens in the future.
What are memory B cells and T cells?
Hepatitis B and HPV vaccines are in this category, because they use pieces of pathogen proteins instead of whole microbes.
What are subunit vaccines?
These enzymes cut DNA at specific sequences and are essential tools for assembling recombinant DNA molecules.
What are restriction enzymes?
Finishing your full course of antibiotics is crucial because stopping early allows these stronger bacteria to survive and multiply.
What are antibiotic-resistant bacteria?
In conductive hearing loss, sound is blocked before reaching this part of the ear, where transduction occurs.
What is the inner ear (specifically the cochlea)?
This term refers to the process of exposing the immune system to a weakened or harmless form of a pathogen to prevent illness.
What is a vaccination?
These vaccines contain pathogens that have been killed, making them safe but often requiring booster shots.
What are inactivated vaccines?
Restriction enzymes that leave overhanging nucleotides produce these ends, which help DNA fragments stick together more easily.
What are sticky ends?
From curing once-deadly infections to enabling modern surgeries, these drugs have transformed human health since the 20th century.
What are antibiotics?
This device bypasses damaged hair cells and directly stimulates the auditory nerve, raising bioethical debates.
What is a cochlear implant?
By increasing the number of immune people in a population, vaccines contribute to this protective community-wide effect.
What is herd immunity?
mRNA vaccines work by delivering genetic instructions that allow your own cells to produce these, which trigger an immune response.
What are antigens (or viral proteins)?
Scientists often prefer restriction enzymes that create sticky ends rather than these ends, which have no overhang.
What are blunt ends?
Overuse, misuse, and agricultural application of antibiotics are all human actions speeding up the evolution of these drug-defying microbes.
What are antibiotic-resistant bacteria (or superbugs)?
In order, sound travels from the pinna → external auditory canal → eardrum → ossicles → cochlea → hair cells → auditory nerve → this final destination in the brain.
What is the auditory cortex?
A drop in vaccination rates often leads to this trend in preventable diseases.
What is an increase (or resurgence) of infectious disease?
Tetanus vaccines contain toxins that have been inactivated by heat or chemicals, placing them in this special vaccine category.
What are toxoid vaccines?
This process involves inserting a gene into a plasmid, transforming bacteria, and using the bacteria to synthesize proteins like vaccines.
What is recombinant DNA technology (or genetic engineering)?