Janus is a keen baseball player at the high school where you are employed as a nurse. He comes to your office and shows you an injury to his knee which he got by sliding into home base, scoring a game-winning run. His knee has a red, raw patch where the skin has been scraped off, and the area around the wound is swollen. Janus tells you that he washed his knee with soap and water to remove any germs and then put a bandage on it.
-Janus asks you if there is something he can use to kill any bacteria in his wound without affecting any of his own body cells. You tell him that some antibiotics kill bacteria by targeting ________, a compound unique to bacteria.

Question

Janus is a keen baseball player at the high school where you are employed as a nurse. He comes to your office and shows you an injury to his knee which he got by sliding into home base, scoring a game-winning run. His knee has a red, raw patch where the skin has been scraped off, and the area around the wound is swollen. Janus tells you that he washed his knee with soap and water to remove any germs and then put a bandage on it. 
-Janus asks you if there is something he can use to kill any bacteria in his wound without affecting any of his own body cells. You tell him that some antibiotics kill bacteria by targeting ________, a compound unique to bacteria.

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Peptidoglycan is a compound unique to bacteria and is a key component of their cell walls. Antibiotics such as penicillin and cephalosporins target and inhibit the formation of peptidoglycan, leading to the death of the bacteria. This means that the use of these antibiotics will not affect Janus's own body cells, which do not have peptidoglycan in their cell walls.

Janus Is a Keen Baseball Player at the High School