Some antimicrobial drugs used to treat bacterial infections target the ribosome. Why is this a good target?

There are a lot of different antimicrobial drugs used to kill bacteria. The drugs would usually disrupt bacterial cell processes to kill them off and treat diseases. For instance, key processes that can be blocked to prevent survival and growth of bacteria are disruption of cell wall synthesis, disruption of membranes, messing up their metabolic pathways, or a general inhibition of protein synthesis. Attacking protein synthesis is a really important pathway. Proteins are necessary for...

There are a lot of different antimicrobial drugs used to kill bacteria. The drugs would usually disrupt bacterial cell processes to kill them off and treat diseases. For instance, key processes that can be blocked to prevent survival and growth of bacteria are disruption of cell wall synthesis, disruption of membranes, messing up their metabolic pathways, or a general inhibition of protein synthesis. Attacking protein synthesis is a really important pathway. Proteins are necessary for survival and growth of any organisms so inhibiting protein synthesis in general would be a really good target to treat infections. Ribosomes are proteins responsible for protein synthesis. Ribosome function can be messed with in various ways - blocking binding to tRNA, blocking peptide formation, disrupting mRNA processing. Any of these will stop protein synthesis.

Protein synthesis occurs in every organisms. However, hosts are not affected by drugs that target ribosomes for a couple of reasons. Bacterial ribosomes, however, are slightly smaller than eukaryotic ribosomes. This, plus a number of structural differences allow for selective inhibition of bacterial ribosomes. Moreover, some drugs are able to cross the bacterial membrane, and accumulate inside the cytosole, where they bind to the ribosome - one example of this is tetracycline. This accumulation does not occur in human cells.

In summary, inhibiting ribosomes will block protein synthesis which totally inhibits cell functions resulting to death. Difference in ribosomes allow for selective targeting of bacteria, thereby not affecting the host.