Metal vs. Bacteria

Even before we knew what bacteria were capable of, we were using certain metals to help fight off their effects.. Hank Green explains how on this episode of SciShow.

Hosted by: Hank Green
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Sources:
Antimicrobial activity of metal: mechanisms, molecular targets and applications (2013)
http://www.nature.com/nrmicro/journal/v11/n6/full/nrmicro3028.html

Metal-based antibacterial substrates for biomedical applications (2015)
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.biomac.5b00773

Antimicrobial polymers with metal nanoparticles (2015)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4307351/

Images:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Smith_Papyrus#/media/File:Edwin_Smith_Papyrus_v2.jpg
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fleming#/media/File:Alexander_Fleming_1945.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver#/media/File:Silver_crystal.jpg