Question

1. Describe what would happen if a microorganism, such as Streptococcus pneumoniae, became resistant to all chemical control methods:

Answer 1

Chemical control methods are used for the following purposes -

To kill all the microbes, including pathogenic and non pathogenic both,

To kill only pathogenic microbes,

To prevent the growth of microbes further

We use chemical control methods to remove unwanted microbes or all the microbes from a given surface of a living or nonliving thing.

In case a microorganism become resistant to all the chemical control methods, then we won't be able to control or kill it any longer. It would be present on all the non living surfaces, on the living tissues, on the instruments used in microbiology and so on. In fact there are very high chances that this microorganism will leak into the environment. Leakage means it will be discarded in its live form into the water bodies, garbage and other sources of pollution.

The best and only way left to to kill these microbes is to heat kill them.

Another way is to develop antibiotics which are new to these microorganisms.

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