20 things you didn’t know about bacteria

21
20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria Rice, Jocelyn. “20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria” Discover December 2008

Upload: quincy

Post on 24-Feb-2016

43 views

Category:

Documents


1 download

DESCRIPTION

20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria. Rice, Jocelyn. “20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria” Discover December 2008. 1. At about 5 million trillion trillion strong, bacteria vastly outnumber all other life-forms on earth. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

Rice, Jocelyn. “20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria” Discover December 2008

Page 2: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

1. At about 5 million trillion trillion strong,

bacteria vastly outnumber all other life-

forms on earth.

Page 3: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

2. Lined up end to end, they would

stretch some billion light-years – literally

from here to the edge of the visible universe

Page 4: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

3. And there are always more on the way. Pseudomonas

natriegens, an ocean dwelling bacterium, can go from birth to reproduction in 10 minutes flat. In five hours a single cell could theoretically give rise to more

than one billion offspring.

Page 5: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

4. Bacteria have been around for atleast 3.5 billion years, making them the oldest life-form on the

planet.

Page 6: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

5. Humans didn’t catch a glimpse of them, though, until 1674, when

Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek spotted tiny

swimming “animacules” while fiddling with the newly invented

microscope.

Page 7: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

6. A compelling argument for brushing: He (Leeuwenhoek)

discovered them while examining pond water and scrapings from

the human mouth.

Page 8: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

7. Most bacteria have yet to be identified. In 2003, J. Craig

Venter began trolling the high seas and analyzing the water. On his first trip he fished out

more than a million never-before-seen bacterial genes.

Page 9: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

8. The first artificial life-form will not be a robot but a bacterium. Not content with finding natural bacteria, Venter is leading an

effort to build a bacterium from scratch.

Page 10: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

9. No escaping them: Your body has 10 times more bacterial cells

than human cells.

Page 11: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

10. Can’t catch them, either. Whipping their tails, E.coli can travel 25 times their own length

in 1 second, equivalent to a horse running 135 miles per

hour.

Page 12: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

11. Bacteria have even set up permanent camp inside our cells.

Mitochondria, the power-house that supplies energy to nearly every cell in the body, are the descendents of

bacteria that were engulfed by larger microorganisms billions of years

ago.

Page 13: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

12. When you pop a pill to kill off a bad bug (bacterium) you kill

some good bugs too. A bacterium called Clostridium

difficile can move into the prime real estate cleared out by antibiotics, causing painful inflammation and diarrhea.

Page 14: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

13. Bacteria are adept at developing resistance to

antibiotics. Among the deadliest of resistant bacteria is MRSA,

which killed 19,000 Americans in 2005 alone.

Page 15: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

14. 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.

Page 16: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

15. 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.

Page 17: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

16. Floating bacteria are extremely effective at spurring condensation, leading to snow

and rain. Some scientists propose spraying bacteria into

the clouds to end drought.

Page 18: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

17. 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.

Page 19: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

18. Another species, Deino-coccus radiodurans, can

survive almost 10,000 times the dose of radiation lethal to

humans, making it a prime candidate for the cleanup of

nuclear waste.

Page 20: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

19. The midas touch:Australian scientists

found that a bacterium called Ralstonia metallidurans can turn dissolved gold into solid

nuggets.

Page 21: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Bacteria

20. But can they run Windows? By programming instructions into

their genes, scientists have engineered E.Coli that act like

computers, assembling into glowing bull’s eye shapes on

command.