Educator Guide: New Rules for Finding Antibiotics

MAKE WAY An antimicrobial (mostly green and white in this illustration) that has been modified to target gram-negative bacteria travels through a channel (brown) on its way inside an E. coli cell.
M.F. RICHTER ET AL/NATURE 2017
About this guide
The article “New ‘rules’ for finding antibiotics” proposes a new strategy for designing antibiotics for gram-negative bacteria. Students can focus on details reported in the article, follow connections to earlier articles about drug-resistant bacteria and antibiotics, and explore cross-curricular connections to other major science topics. In a related activity, students can test how susceptible yogurt bacteria are to antibiotics and determine whether the bacteria are gram-positive or gram-negative.