In article <3675D726.2C50 at tu-bs.de>, Stefanie Greve <S.Greve at tu-bs.de> wrote:
>Hello!
>Not long ago I tried to get an answer according to wether antibiotics
>have to be produced by microorganisms in order to be called antibiotics.
>But alas, there was no one there who was able and willing to give me an
>accurate answer to my question. So here I come and try again.
>Obviously there is a difference between an antimicrobial agent in
>general and an antibiotic as penicillin or something similar. Otherwise
>there would not be another name, would it? Furthermore, I would not call
>lysozyme an antibiotic. Is this at least correct?
>The original question referred to wether antimicrobial agents produced
>by metazoae can be called antibiotics or not.
>I do not think this question is trivial, if so, please let me know - I
>will immedeately stop bothering you.
In 1932 Selman Waksman showed that when Mycobacterium tuberculosis was
added to certain types of soil the bacteria died. In 1953, he coined the
term antibiotic to explain this phenomenom:
"... a chemical substance, produced by microorganisms, which has the
capacity to inhibit the growth and even to destroy bacteria and other
microorganisms, in dilute solutions"
So according to Waksman, yes.
See:
http://www-micro.msb.le.ac.uk/Tutorials/dfwt/dfwt1.html
--
Dr Alan J. Cann PhD, Department of Microbiology & Immunology,
University of Leicester, P.O. Box 138, Medical Sciences Building,
University Road, Leicester LE1 9HN, UK.
