These bacteria cells in the black light microscope are extremely small, perhaps only a few microns across. The most interesting part is that the bacteria cells are so tiny that they are often confused for the nucleus of a cell. At the same time, the presence of such tiny organisms shows that the cell is not functioning as a complete unit.
Microscopic organisms are often one of the first things to go wrong in a scientific experiment. There is absolutely no way to know if this is true when trying to study bacteria. Scientists can see the cell, but they can’t tell if it is functioning normally or not. They can simply ask an individual cell to do something and it will do it, but they will not know if it is doing it spontaneously or not.
In this experiment, a group of bacteria was placed in a petri dish. A microscope was used to look at the bacteria and find out how they were behaving. The results were startling. The cells seemed to be doing everything by themselves, but when they were brought into a group, they all did something. When they were separated into two groups, one of the groups managed to do something, but the other did not.
As if this wasn’t enough evidence for us, the scientists were able to observe how the bacteria would react to each other by putting them under a microscope. They found that when they were placed in a crowd, the bacteria were more cooperative. However, when they were separated, they were no longer cooperative.
The group of bacteria that were the most cooperative was a distinct, individual species, called Fusobacterium nucleatum, which is a Gram-positive, spore-forming pathogen. It is only found in the human body. So if we want to treat these bacteria with antibiotics, we may need to find a way to isolate and treat them. However, this is a lot harder than you might think.
So you can say that there are a million reasons to be wary of bacteria, but it’s probably at least two that are most important: 1) There is a very small percentage of them that are truly dangerous, and 2) the more pathogenic of these bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics. For instance, F. nucleatum is a common cause of acute urinary tract infections, but when treated with antibiotics it becomes resistant to the drug. The same is true for other common bacterial infections.
The bacteria that can cause these infections are more likely to be found on surfaces that are moist (such as clothes). These can be found in homes too — the bacteria that cause skin infections. The one that most often causes respiratory infections is S. aureus, which is the major cause of pneumonia and can’t be treated with antibiotics, so people are encouraged to wash their hands after any contact with skin.
So much for the hygiene thing. If you’ve been infected by a pathogen, you’re lucky if you’re not in a hospital. Most of us are, but not all of us. And it’s a good thing, too, because while we can get these infections, antibiotics don’t work very well on them. They’re very hard to spread and the drugs don’t seem to be particularly good at fighting the bacteria.
The bacteria that cause disease in humans are not the most common ones. The majority of pathogens are viruses. Viruses are extremely tiny, about a millimiter by a millimeter, and they basically replicate only in the cells of their host. We know they are able to replicate because when we look at what is inside bacteria cells, we see the same thing.
The virus is able to pass this information on to the bacteria that is in the bacteria cell. This is why diseases like TB and influenza are rampant in the world. When a person is infected by disease, they are very quickly infected by the bacteria that lives within them. This is why the flu is so deadly and why HIV causes AIDS.