Bacteria
are amazing.
Bacteria are microscopic, single-celled organisms that thrive in
diverse environments. These organisms can live in soil, the ocean and inside
the human gut.
Humans' relationship with bacteria is complex. Sometimes
bacteria lend us a helping hand, such as by curdling milk into yoghurt, or
helping with our digestion. In other
cases, bacteria are destructive, causing diseases like pneumonia and MRSA.
Here
are some facts you may not know.
At
about 5 million trillion trillion strong, bacteria and their cousins, the
archaea, vastly outnumber all other life-forms on earth.
Lined
up end to end, they would stretch some 10 billion light-years; literally from here to the edge of the
visible universe.
And
there are always more on the way. “Pseudomonas
Natriegens”, an ocean-dwelling bacterium, can go from birth to reproduction in
ten minutes flat. In five hours, a
single cell could theoretically give rise to more than 1 billion offspring.
Bacteria
have been around for at least 3.5 billion years, making them the oldest known
life-form on the planet.
Humans
didn’t catch a glimpse of them, until 1674, when a Dutch scientist, Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek spotted tiny swimming “animacules” while fiddling with the newly
invented microscope. A compelling
argument for brushing: He discovered
them while examining pond water and scrapings from the human mouth.
Most
bacteria have yet to be identified. In
2003 geneticist J. Craig Venter began trolling the high seas and analysing the
water. On his first trip he fished out
more than a million never-before-seen bacterial genes.
The
first artificial life-form will be not a robot but a bacterium. Not content with finding natural bacteria,
Venter is leading an effort to build a bacterium from scratch!!!
Your
body has 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells.
Whipping
their tails, “E-Coli” can travel 25 times their own length in 1 second. This is
the equivalent to a horse running 135 miles per hour.
Bacteria
have even set up permanent camp inside our cells. Mitochondria, the powerhouses that supply
energy to nearly every cell in the body, are the descendants of bacteria that
were engulfed by larger microorganisms billions of years ago.
When
you pop a pill to kill off a bad bug, you kill some of the good guys, too. A
bacterium called “Clostridium Difficile” can move into the prime intestinal
real estate cleared out by antibiotics, causing painful inflammation and Diarrhoea.
Bacteria
are adept at developing resistance to antibiotics. Among the deadliest of resistant bacteria is “MRSA”
which killed 19,000 Americans in 2005 alone.
MRSA’s deadliness comes in part from a class of chemicals known as
carotenoids, which MRSA uses to fight off our immune systems. Ironically, carotenoids are found in many
healthy fruits and vegetables and may reduce cancer risk.
But
most bacteria are harmless, and some are even helpful in aiding our digestion.
Mice with bacteria-free intestines need to eat 41 percent more calories than
their germy counterparts.
Floating
bacteria are extremely effective at spurring condensation, leading to snow and
rain. Some scientists propose spraying
bacteria into the clouds to end droughts.
Certain bacteria thrive in extreme conditions. In 2006, a probe at a South African gold mine
turned up bacteria living nearly two miles underground, subsisting on the
energy given off by radioactive rocks.
Another bacterial species, “Deinococcus Radiodurans”,
can survive almost 10,000 times the dose of radiation lethal to humans, making
it a prime candidate for the clean-up of nuclear waste.
Australian
scientists found that a bacterium called “Ralstonia Metallidurans” can turn
dissolved gold into solid nuggets.
By programming instructions into their genes, scientists
have engineered “E Coli” that act like computers, assembling into glowing
bulls-eye shapes on command
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