Bacteria and Alternate Energy

This entry isn't strictly related to antimicrobials, but I am posting it anyway because this is so cool.  Bacteria have the potential to become an amazing source of alternate energy.  This is how:

Termites can turn a single sheet of paper into 2 liters of hydrogen when they digest it.  That is a lot of hydrogen from a little cellulose and this is a pretty unique feature of termites because most other organisms make methane and most can't break down cellulose.  However, it isn't actually the termite that produces the hydrogen, it is the bacteria that live in the termites gut.  There are about 200 species of bacteria that live inside of a termites gut and between them, they are able to get the job done.  No one is exactly sure how they do it and it probably isn't a single species of bacteria that does it.  Probably one species of bacteria does one step and then passes the products of the first step on to some other species assembly line style until hydrogen is made. If scientists can work out all of the steps in the pathway, then it would be possible (probably) to put all of the necessary components of that pathway into a single strain of E. coli or some other microbe and then feed them wood or post consumer paper waste and harvest hydrogen.

My dream would be to stick bacteria in my gas tank and then put all of my paper garbage in there instead of having to go to the gas station. Or better yet, heating my house by feeding bacteria my paper trash.  Since burning hydrogen produces water, I could also water my garden without emptying any reservoirs or lakes.  cool huh!

Bacteria and obesity

I am a nerd and therefore I have read a lot of sci-fi,  a lot of which has plot based on someone trying to take over the world.  Perhaps this is why I like bacteria so much.....because they already have taken over the world.  

How? They can kill us off and regularly do....Our food and water supplies are somewhat at their mercies...and a lot of the new technology we are developing actually comes from bacteria ....drugs....detergents....alternate energy sources...most of these have components produced by bacteria.  It appears that they may have also taken over our bodies.  This shouldn't be too surprising because a normal human body contains more bacterial cells than human cells and that is bound to have some effect.  One of the ways that our bodies might be affected by bacteria is that they might affect our energy uptake.  This makes sense, because most of them live in our guts,  where we absorb energy.

Okay, so this is the story.  Our gut bacteria are comprised of lots of different types of bacteria, but two of the most important are the firmicutes and the bacteroidetes.  Lean people have lots of bacteroidetes and obese people have lots of firmicutes.  If an obese person starts eating a lot of vegetables, the s/he will experience a change in gut bacterial composition.  More bacteroidetes will become present and there will be fewer firmicutes.  So you may think to yourself that this is an effect of a healthier diet and that weight loss is also a direct effect of the healthier diet.  However, if you take bacteria from the guts of an obese mouse and stick them into the gut of a lean mouse, the lean mouse gains a lot of weight....kind of scary.  

This makes me want to eat lots of vegetables so that I can keep a healthy population of bacteria in my gut.

Biofilms....The good the bad and the ugly

I am perpetually amazed at the places that biofilms pop up.  Especially when they are growing in my lab.  What?! Someone stashed a bucket of tubes soaking in bleach because they didn't want to clean them and now there is a fluorescent pink biofilm growing across the top of them?  Great.  My latest find was the morgue, which everyone uses but no one empties.  There was a biofilm on the top that actually resembled tripe.  (I'll spare you the pictures because they are gross, although the smell is worse.)

A biofilm is created when bacteria secrete an extracellular matrix that attaches them to other bacteria and to the surface of an object. Biofilms coat the insides of our guts, although in that case they are good. They also coat are teeth, but in that instance they are bad. They aren't all ugly. If you have been to Yellowstone , then you have seen bacterial mats and those are biofilms too.

Biofilms make bacteria more durable. They become more resistant to antibiotics and are less likely to get washed away than their unattached counterparts. Mechanical disruption is usually the force that breaks up biofilms, but I have also found that multiple applications of concentrated bleach does pretty well too.

The common cold and hand sanitizers

I have no great love for hand sanitizers.  My hands never feel clean after using them.  NPR did a whole report on how hand sanitizers do not kill the common cold virus.  Listen here.