What does penicillin do to a bacteria?

Answer:
what Diane is saying is:
It does not necessarily kill them, it keeps them from reproducing.

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It kills bacteria.boohoo!

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All antibiotics function to disrupt normal life functioning in the bacteria rendering them either weakened (bacteriostatic) or dead (bacteriacidial). The penicillian class of antibiotics work by inhibiting the formation of peptidoglycan cross links in the bacterial cell wall. The 尾-lactam moiety of penicillin binds to the enzyme (transpeptidase) that links the peptidoglycan molecules in bacteria, and this weakens the cell wall of the bacterium (in other words, the antibiotic causes cytolysis or death). In addition, the build-up of peptidoglycan precursors triggers the activation of bacterial cell wall hydrolases which further digest the bacteria's existing peptidoglycan.

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i want to go into teaching, so lets see if i can explain this clearly...
------------------------------...Basically, penicillin is a "gyrase inhibitor". gyrase is something which is involved in bacterial replication, (its actual role is to unwind the bacterial DNA during bacterial replication) but u dont need to know about that in much detail. So if you inhibit gyrase, youre interfering with the process of replication.and so the bacteria cant populate in numbers.hence the term "gyrase inhibitor"Hope this makes sense... i've tried to write this as simply as possible
... miaow ;-)

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Penicillin bores holes into the cell wall of bacteria, causing the contents of the cell to empty out. Thus, the cell dies.

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