When you hear the phrase “I want
to suck your blood,” you think of vampires, right? Well similarly there are vampires in the
microbe world! Now how does this work? A bacteria species lives just by sucking the
life out of other microbes, pretty cool huh?
Well as cool as that is, it gets better.
The bacteria has the potential to be considered a living antibiotic. The bacteria works by attaching itself to the
cell wall of the victim, then sucks out all the nutrients and energy from the
cell, leaving that cell dead. This strategy
can be used for treating bacteria based human diseases.
“‘Pathologists may eventually be
able to use this bacterium to fight fire with fire, so to speak, as a bacterium
that will aggressively hunt for and attack certain other bacteria that are
extremely harmful to humans,’ study researcher Martin Wu said in a statement.”
These bacteria have been
extremely difficult to study because they are contaminated by the other
bacteria they feed on. A study at the University
of Virginia had used modern genetic techniques to isolate and sequence the genome of the vampire bacteria. According to the study, the bacteria can't live on their own, even if all the nutrients needed are available. "That's because they don't have the genes necessary to transport some integral nutrients through their cell wall, so they need to get them directly from other bacteria." Understanding how the bacteria functions may be able to help us with the living antibiotic idea. "Traditional antibiotics breed resistance as the bacteria adapt to the drugs and "escape" their antibacterial effects. This resistance leads to super-bugs, bacteria that are resistant to multiple kinds of drugs." If we would somehow be able to use these "vampire" microbes to our advantage, we would be able to avoid the "super-bug" and the adaptation to antibiotics, and will reduce our dependence for the use of "traditional" antibiotics.
This I think is reslly intteresting. This is something I have known about, but the way that you wrote about it made it something that I am excited about doinng more research about. I think that is interesting how this research can be used to possibly found new antibiotics. This being able to benefit the world is an amazing and should be the sole reason to do research. Everyone and everybody is connect and I believe that we can use each other to sole the problems of the world!
ReplyDeleteI remember when we discussed this topic briefly in class and I thought that it was very fascinating, and I still feel that way. If we could actually use this microbe to "fight fire with fire" I believe that we would be taking a huge step towards bettering our immune systems and the way that we fight off the "bad microbes". The theory that new antibiotics could be found as a result of the research is amazing. This topic really makes me wonder what the answer is to the question that makes up or biology class, " are microbes our friends, or are they our foes?" I really don't know the answer to that question, but I'm sure we will be finding out very soon.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing! The only thing that I would have done differently is I would have mentioned what the little blood suckers are actually called.
Awesome job!
I found your blog topic really interesting. It amazes me how we can use microbes to our benefit like antibiotics, its crazy, how they can either harm us or others like them but still be helpful is some what manner. like a double sided person that wants to be a supper hero and a villain. such extraordinary things.
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome! I hope they soon perfect it as an antibiotic, this will probably get rid of the problems related to pathogens building up tolerance. I will sorry for the bacterias being eaten but if they are harmful then I'm glad haha. The microbe world never stops amusing me. I wonder where they are getting these murder bacterias from in order to study them? This was a fun educational read, thank you!
ReplyDelete