Your roommate discovers a new antibiotic! The drug works by destroying ribosomes

Question

Your roommate discovers a new antibiotic! The drug works by destroying ribosomes, the little machines that make proteins. Your roommate tests the drug on eukaryotic ribosomes, and it doesn’t affect them. Yippee, you’re going to save a lot of lives!! You and your roommate test the drug on bacterial cells, and they all die! Just to be safe, you test the drug on human cells. Oh no, these cells die too! Why do you think the drug kills human cells even though the drug doesn’t interact with eukaryotic ribosomes?

Explanation / Answer

the drug might be affecting some other function of the cell that is crutial for its survival. just by testing a drug on eukaryotic ribosome doesnt mean it will not interfear with the normal funtioning of the cells that are not related or not directly related to the ribosome. The drug might have also been modified inside the environment of the cell to adversly affect it.

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