I could have been born an earthworm or a bug or a mite or a bacterium, I could have experienced existence and then disappeared without gaining anything, diving into mud at the bottom of a lake, advancing with peristaltic movements, waving my vibrating cilia in a drop of water, digging canals with my mandibles through a hunk of cheese that would have been my universe for my entire life. I could have been a fungus that gave thrush to a stray dog, or who the hell knows what, anything else. I could have been not only without conscience, but even without consciousness, even without feeling.
A life without feeling (...) To have the sacred opportunity to live in the world... and all you get to be is a chip from a tree trunk that is your whole universe.
A woman in Tacoma, WA was diagnosed with an active infection of tuberculosis. She has already infected several medical staff and refuses to quarantine and receive treatment for her infection. Courts are presently working on litigation to either force her into receiving treatment or jail time.
While the legal process is at work, it is really important for everyone to take preventative measures to stop the spread of tuberculosis. It can lay dormant for a long time. This has the potential to spread worldwide to nations that have otherwise kept a lid on TB infections.
Researchers have uncovered a bacteria that “eats” plastic and could help to support plastic recycling efforts across the globe.
More than 380 million tons of plastic are produced every year, nearly half of which is single-use. And while recycling efforts are widespread, less than 5% of all plastic is recycled, with the rest of it often winding up in landfills.
That could soon change thanks to a discovery by Northwestern University researchers, which was published in Nature Chemical Biology.
The researchers discovered that a common bacterium called Comamonas testosteroni, found in soil and sewage sludge, has the potential to consume plastic. The researchers observed the bacterium’s ability to break down laundry detergent as well as compounds in plastic and plants — basically, it’s hungry for the carbon that these materials turn into as they break down.
“Soil bacteria provide an untapped, underexplored, naturally occurring resource of biochemical reactions that could be exploited to help us deal with the accumulating waste on our planet,” Northwestern environmental engineering professor Ludmilla Aristilde said in a statement.
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“We found that the metabolism of C. testosteroni is regulated on different levels,” Aristile continued, “and those levels are integrated. The power of microbiology is amazing and could play an important role in establishing a circular economy.”
Because this bacterium naturally has the ability to break down plastic, the research team says it could make it an ideal candidate for use in municipal and other large-scale recycling operations.
For a variety of reasons, not all plastics can be recycled — especially at home. That’s due to everything from limitations at recycling facilities and plastics being combined with other materials to food waste left in plastic containers.
Aristilde said that the benefit of the C. testosteroni is that it’s pre-disposed to a plastic diet and doesn’t require any modification.
“Engineering bacteria for different purposes is a laborious process,” Aristilde said. “It is important to note that C. testosteroni cannot use sugars, period. It has natural genetic limitations that prevent competition with sugars, making this bacterium an attractive platform.”
The researchers also discovered that bacteria could help to recycle plastic into different byproducts. According to Aristilde, the digested plastic could be turned into different polymers by the bacteria.
“These Comamonas species have the potential to make several polymers relevant to biotechnology,” Aristilde said. “This could lead to new platforms that generate plastic, decreasing our dependence on petroleum chemicals.
“One of my lab’s major goals is to use renewable resources,” Aristilde continued, “such as converting waste into plastic and recycling nutrients from wastes. Then, we won’t have to keep extracting petroleum chemicals to make plastics, for instance.”
While the bacteria isn’t yet in use at recycling facilities, it could be soon enough.
Bacteria grow in sprawling communities – as individual cells divide, so the overall colony grows. The plucky prokaryotes share chemicals with their neighbours, often feeding growth into stubborn biofilms that are difficult to disrupt. Here researchers find another clue to survival in the colony – canals. Pictured under a microscope, this colony of Pseudomonas aeruginosa develops channels (blue) sloshing fluids along each exploratory arm of the colony as it sprawls out. Researchers find that biosurfactant chemicals made by the bacteria help to lower surface tension in the channels, allowing them to send chemical packages called vesicles, or even to travel themselves, like barges on a canal (but 100 million times smaller). The team saw this long-range transport – a form of the Marangoni effect – even in bacteria without hair-like flagella often used to waft chemicals around. Further studies may allow researchers to develop new compounds to break disease-causing colonies apart.
Written by John Ankers
Video by Ye Li and colleagues
Department of Physics, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Published in eLife, September 2022
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personally i'm an advocate of eating germs. maybe a little bacteria and parasites if i'm feeling daring. just dropped a slice of cake on the most traveled section of the floor in my home and picked it up and ate it anyway. a little target practice for my immune system.
Today we had to find our “unknown” and find what it is and if it’s gram positive or gram negative. 
I first had to get the igniter outs as well as the Bunsen burner and my inoculating loop. I had to get my unknown broth which was number 13 (is also my lucky number and the day of my birthday as well), and dip my loop into the unknown broth tube. I then put the loop inside of the sample 13 tube, mixed it a bit then, put the mixture onto a clean slide in a circular motion. I then heat fixed it for 10 minutes and Gram stained it. Once gram stained, I was able to see I have a gram negative bacteria showing rods!
I also took the loop, Sanitized it with the Bunsen burner, and then put it back into the broth to put them on each of my Agar plates: EMB, MAC, & XLD.
On Wednesday we will see what grows on my plates whether it’s bacteria or fungi etc.
Haha. Funny. Funny Cyanothece. She’s a hardworking gal who produces a lot of oxygen and has the world on her shoulders
If you wanna learn some funky bacteria facts look under the cut :D
Cyanothece are a type of phytoplankton and cyanobacteria.
Fun fact! This bacteria is very widely believed to be related to the bacteria that eventually became chloroplasts in plant cells!
They are aquatic bacteria and like to live in the tropics so they can get about 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness every day. Why? It’s the most optimal way to get the most photosynthesis and most nitrogen fixation!
For those who aren’t aware, nitrogen fixation converts Nitrogen gas into a usable form for cells to later go into the ammonia buffer or make proteins and amino acids :) (later going onto basic cell shit and dna replication) However the enzyme that helps do this breaks down in the presence of Oxygen. So since photosynthesis makes excess oxygen, they can’t happen at the same time, even while cellular respiration is taking the oxygen.
So yay light and dark cycles! Did you know that 80% of atmospheric oxygen is given to us by phytoplankton and other aquatic photosynthetic organisms! Very cool shit!
Sometimes cyanothece make these cool heterocysts which are basically nitrogen fixation hubs for a string of cyanothece. They pop up every 8-10 cells and transfer their fixed nitrogen to the other cells in return of glucose they can use for photosynthesis later. The walls are thicker to better ensure that oxygen doesn’t get in and the only stuff that comes in is the stuff it gets from it’s friends :)
Cyanothece are gram negative bacteria meaning they have two cell membranes and a thinner peptidoglycan cell well. The outer membrane outer leaflet is actually made of something called Lipid A, instead of your regular phospholipid bilayer you’re used to ;P
That’s all for now! Come by some time to learn some more bacteria stuff and watch some funky art