Image: Jessica Weisman
In Brief
- Bacterial pathogens multiply and make toxins inside human hosts, but how the microbes elude our defenses and deliver their poisons have been poorly understood.
- Studying host-pathogen interactions reveals sophisticated bacterial strategies for co-opting and manipulating host cells to serve a bacterium’s needs.
- A new understanding of bacterial tools and tactics is leading to novel approaches for battling the microbes.
Most bacteria are well-behaved companions. Indeed, if you are ever feeling lonely, remember that the trillions of microbes living in and on the average human body outnumber the human cells by a ratio of 10 to one. Of all the tens of thousands of known bacterial species, only about 100 are renegades that break the rules of peaceful coexistence and make us sick.
Collectively, those pathogens can cause a lot of trouble. Infectious diseases are the second leading cause of death worldwide, and bacteria are well represented among the killers. Tuberculosis alone takes nearly two million lives every year, and Yersinia pestis, infamous for causing bubonic plague, killed approximately one third of Europe’s population in the 14th century. Investigators have made considerable progress over the past 100 years in taming some species with antibiotics, but the harmful bacteria have also found ways to resist many of those drugs. It is an arms race that humans have been losing of late, in part because we have not understood our enemy very well.
This article was originally published with the title The Art of Bacterial Warfare.
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10 Comments
Add CommentFor the bug phobic in the population, simply raise your body temperature by 70 degrees. Microwave, boil or bake and your fear is eliminated forever.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisactually raising the body temperature to just 1o1 to 106 can effectively destroy most bacteria and viruses, not to mention cancer cells.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually raising the body temperature to just 101 to 106 destroys most invading bacteria and viruses, not to mention cancer cells. It's call a fever.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBacterial pathogens multiply and make toxins inside human hosts, but JUST how the microbes elude our defenses and deliver their poisons haS, UNTIL now, been ONLY poorly understood.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAfter a kick-off requiring that weight of correction to the English, it was no surprise that it was total balloney.
Well done Balloney manufacturers, can't wait for your next offering !
I heard on the Science channel that a scientist discovered how to selective kill any bactera or virus with an injection and do no harm to the good virsus or bactera. How come SciAm didn't pick up on that show and do an article on it? On that same show and I believe that same scientist found a virus so large that at first, they thought it was a bactera. They believe that we will get to know that virus better during our metamorphises in 2012. Don't laugh, 2012 is a scientific fact, if you can believe anything a scientist says.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat would require a very, very small hypodermic, and steadier hands than most of us - even "non-scientists" - have.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCool idea so long as you leave your brain somewhere else.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn this artical it is said "microbes living in and on the average human body out number the human cells by a ratio of 10 to one." My question is how much of our weight do they account for? Thanks, Luke J. Nester
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot much.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYes, the year 2012 is a scientific fact... the year will be there when we get to it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this