Comment by geuis
4 days ago
Be very careful when stating this kind of thing. It's extremely easy for people that already have a hard time understanding science and medicine to take this as evidence to support their anti science and anti vaccine/medicine.
Different antibiotics target different cellular mechanisms depending on what the microorganism is. And almost none of them target the mitochondria at all.
Yes the common hypothesis is that mitochondria were originally a symbiotic separate organism that joined the cells that eventually became the origin of most complex life.
Remember that if that's what happened, it was over 3 billion years ago. After that immense amount of time, mitochondria aren't really separate organisms anymore. They're deeply entwined into every complex organism in the world. Very unlikely for common antibiotics to have any effect on them at all.
They do still act like separate organisms, including their own DNA and ability to synthesise proteins. Quinolones are known for being potentially very nasty, that's not 'anti-science'.