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

1. At about 5 million trillion trillion strong,

bacteria vastly outnumber all other life-

forms on earth.

2. Lined up end to end, they would

stretch some billion light-years – literally

from here to the edge of the visible universe

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.

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

planet.

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.

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

discovered them while examining pond water and scrapings from

the human mouth.

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.

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.

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

than human cells.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

19. The midas touch:Australian scientists

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

nuggets.

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.