All bacteria want to survive, everywhere and at any time. Unfortunately, for them to establish a niche in our bodies, they may overcome our immune system and make us sick. Different bacteria can lead to different infections, symptoms and diseases.
Many bacterial pathogens have surprising and fascinating mechanisms to live in our bodies, grow a niche and combat our immune players. From sensing our body temperature to stealing iron from our bodies, pathogenic mechanisms can be smart and creative.
Antibiotics are often described as ‘magic bullets’, but bacteria will surely disagree. To them, antibiotics are molecules that try to kill them by disrupting essential cellular processes. In this post, we’ll discuss how antibiotics work and why bacteria experience so-called stress upon an antibiotic attack.
Your immune system is constantly patrolling your body, ensuring that it stays clean and free of disease. Every single day, every hour, every minute, pathogens are pouring in, attempting to call your body their home and cause disease. But your immune system has specialised drones who bring the fight directly to the intruders. These drones are the so-called complement system. They keep bacterial pathogens at bay to ensure that we stay healthy.
Bacteria learned to live on all sorts of surfaces and in different environments. This also includes plants. Unfortunately, some bacteria can also make plants sick. These have special mechanisms with which they speak the language of plants with the goal to enter them.
When bacteria enter the human body, they are welcomed by our immune system that is ready to fight them off. However, some bacteria can put on invisibility cloaks that help them hide from the immune system. Thanks to this sugar coat – the so-called bacterial capsule – bacteria can sneak into our bodies, infect us and make us sick.
Bacteria swim through liquids with their flagella. Some bacteria even have two flagella at opposite ends that help them to swim through mucus and slime. This movement helps bacteria to infect the human body. Now, researchers start to better understand how these flagella work together to move the bacterium forward.
When bacteria enter our bodies, they encounter a whole range of stressful situations. However, some pathogens, like Salmonella, learned several clever ways to deal with these stresses. They manage to adapt to the changing temperature, pH and the reduced food available. This helps this bacterium to infect us and even make us sick.
Bacteria can sense the iron concentration of their environment thanks to special iron transporters, of which they produce multiple.
Bacteria in your mouth protect your teeth from pathogenic bacteria. When you eat lots of sugars, the pathogens can fight off your friendly bacteria. The more pathogenic bacteria grow on your teeth, the more acids they produce that can cause caries and cavities. Learn about the bacterial battles in your mouths.
Pathogenic bacteria developed different mechanisms to attach to human host cells. However, our immune system learned to fight back, so that a constant battle between bacteria and host is happening in our bodies.
Some pathogenic bacteria use a weapon which is called type 3 secretion system to infect their host targets.
Bacteria developed different antimicrobial resistance mechanisms to get rid of antibiotics. Here, you will learn what bacteria do with antibiotics so that they don’t harm them and what superbugs are.
All bacteria want to survive, everywhere and at any time. Unfortunately, for them to establish a niche in our bodies, they may overcome our immune system and make us sick. Different bacteria can lead to different infections, symptoms and diseases.
Many bacterial pathogens have surprising and fascinating mechanisms to live in our bodies, grow a niche and combat our immune players. From sensing our body temperature to stealing iron from our bodies, pathogenic mechanisms can be smart and creative.