eli5 Why can’t we just crush bacteria to kill it?
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You can, but it’s not a super effective way to do so.
Bacteria are small. Like, really, really small. Whatever you’re using to crush them probably isn’t super smooth. They can easily fit into the tiny gaps that exist in most surfaces. Especially if you’re trying to use your hands, your skin is way too soft to crush bacteria.
Killing bacteria with a hammer would be the equivalent of putting out a fire with a water hose. You can’t put water out where the fire is; you have to extinguish the fire to save the building.
In order to fight infection, you need to kill bacteria before it grows into something worse.
I’ve talked about why some antibiotics are failing. But if bacteria keep adapting, why are so many antibiotics still working? Antibiotics that are no longer effective have not yet become resistant to those that remain effective. How is this possible?
Most antibiotics kill bacteria by binding to a receptor on the surface of the cell membrane. Once bound, they prevent the cell from making energy and divide, just as a key will prevent the ignition of a key in a car’s ignition.
While we don’t have a simple way to kill bacteria through directly crushing them, there are industrial processes that use high pressures (>100 atmospheres) to kill bacteria. You can search up “High Pressure Processing” for more info about that.
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