Bacteria Training Guide

What is a bacteria?• Bacteria are tiny, living organisms that get nutrients (food) from their environments, just like any other

living thing. In some cases that environment is a human body, but bacteria can reproduce inside or outside of something living. Some bacteria are harmful, while other bacteria are necessary for you to survive. All of these bacteria, harmful and helpful, are in the kingdoms Eubacteria and Archaeabacteria.

Good bacteria live all over a human’s body, for example in the intestines where they help us digest our food. Bacteria can be used to make food, like cheese and yogurt, and medicine.

However, harmful bacteria can cause all sorts of infections that can lead to serious illness or even death.

Good bacteriaHarmful Bacteria

Salmonella bacteria

How do bacteria get into your body?Well, the truth is, these living things are so small that you need a microscope to see them. They are smaller than our own cells, so our body has a difficult time stopping them. Our skin, like the walls around a castle, provides an excellent defense. However, our skin has tiny holes, called pores, where bacteria can often sneak in and cause infections on the surface of the skin. This leads to things like pimples, where bacteria have entered and set off the immune system’s alarm. Bacteria can also sneak in through cuts and wounds on the skin.

Bacteria can also enter through your eyes, nose and mouth. This happens when someone sneezes or coughs and puts bacteria into the air. When you inhale air, you also inhale what people have sneezed out so bacteria can easily get into your lungs.

Have you ever seen those antibacterial wipes? Well, those are used to help kill bacteria that might be living on something, which could have come from snot, pee or poop (if someone touched it and didn’t wash their hands!) People also use hand sanitizer to kill bacteria that they may have picked up somewhere, like a door handle.

Bacteria can be in the food you eat, too. When food is put into a can it needs to be super-heated in order to kill off harmful bacteria. This is also why you cook chicken and other meat, rather than eat it raw. If you ate raw chicken, you would probably get a harmful bacteria called Salmonella.

FoodHands

Nose and Mouth

SexThere are many different types of sexually transmitted diseases that are caused by bacteria, which lead to harmful infections. For example, gonorrhea, syphilis, and chlamydia are all cause by bacteria travelling through unprotected sex. It is very important to use protection to help stop the spread of these bacterial diseases.

What do bacteria do when they get into your body?

Harmful bacteria can produce toxins, which are poisons that can be deadly. For example, a can of food that has not been heated enough can have lots of bacteria in it, producing deadly toxins. Eating this food can make someone very sick and can even cause death.

Bacteria can reproduce at tremendous speeds! This is because bacteria are so small and they can clone themselves! Most of the time, a bacterium will simply copy itself, and break into two bacteria. This is called binary fission, and it is a type of asexual (non-sexual) reproduction. Sometimes, two bacteria can go through sexual reproduction when they exchange genetic information (DNA) with each other through a tube between them. This is called conjugation.

They reproduce!

They poison you!

Bacteria must get food. Some bacteria can convert sunlight into food, much like plants do (autotrophs). Other bacteria get food by breaking down chemicals that they take in from their environment (heterotrophs). When bacteria live in you, that means that the bacteria break down your chemicals that you need. When bacteria steal your nutrients from your cells, you get sick. Your immune system tries to fight it off, causing many symptoms.

They consume you!

How do you get rid of these harmful bacteria?

Antibiotics are used to either kill bacteria directly or to slow bacterial growth and reproduction. Antibiotics can stop the bacteria from making more cell walls, which normally protect the bacteria from its environment. Antibiotics can also work by destroying a bacteria’s metabolism, or by blocking the bacteria from making more DNA, RNA, and proteins. Antibiotics do not work on viruses or on human cells because they destroy things that are specific to bacteria.

Antibiotics can stop working. If you have been on an antibiotic before, your doctor may have told you “discontinue use after seven to ten days.” This is because bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics, which means unaffected by the medicine, when it is over-used. If people take antibiotics too much, eventually there will be a mutant bacterium that can survive through the medicine. Since it lives, it will reproduce and make more bacteria that are resistant to the antibiotic. What doesn’t kill them can make them stronger!

Some Examples of Diseases Caused by Bacteria....

• Chlamydia

• Salmonella

• Botulism

• Tuberculosis

• MRSA

• Gonorrhea

• E. Coli

• Toxic Shock Syndrome

• Bacterial Meningitis

• Anthrax