Can antibiotics kill archaea, or is a different agent required?
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Some antibiotics can kill some (but not all) archaea, and some archaea can be killed by some (but not all) antibiotics. However, archaea aren’t thought to be human pathogens, so antibiotics aren’t designed/developed to killed archaea and aren’t prescribed to patients with that purpose.
Archaea aren’t really considered pathogens to humans or disease causing so we never created a method for them. Antibiotics are aimed toward bacteria. Some destroy them outright by preventing their cell wall from forming or inhibiting their growth(block protein/nucleic acid synthesis). The negative effect is that some of these antibiotics are broad spectrum. They can kill some of our own cells or microbiota. But the main reason is that archaea, bacteria, and eukaryotic all have different ribosomes. The antibiotics we develop target bacterial ribosomes specifically to prevent protein synthesis.
There is no definitive answer to this question since there is limited research on the topic. However, it is generally believed that antibiotics are not effective against archaea. This is because archaea are more resistant to antibiotics than other types of microorganisms. Therefore, a different agent may be required to kill archaea.
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