Can antibiotics kill archaea, or is a different agent required?

Question

Can antibiotics kill archaea, or is a different agent required?

In: 3

Answer 1

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.