Bacteria have powerful killing machines with which they carve out their own niches. To kill competitors, bacteria from the Vibrio family, have a powerful crossbow and its arrows availble. However, these bacteria can decide whether they risk a kill and take up what’s left of the dead prey or they escape the dangerous situation. Here, we look at how bacteria decide to kill or flee.
Cable bacteria are long chains of bacteria that transport electrons within this chain. In this fascinating bacterial cable, these bacteria then conduct electricity.
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.
Some bacteria in our guts have proteins that cleave off sugars from our blood cells. This can lead to temporally changing blood types to feed the bacteria.
Chemotaxis helps bacteria to know that they are surrounded by certain chemicals. They can then move towards them if the chemicals are helpful. But how does chemotaxis work? Find out here.
When bacteria are hungry, they sometimes also need the help of their friends. In that case, bacteria can build little tubes between them to exchange nutrients. With this bacterial nanotube, they can exchange nutrients and thus feed each other to make sure everyone survives.
Bacteria sense iron in the environment via proteins that are transporters and receptors in one. The transporter imports iron, while the receptor tells the bacterium that iron is present on the outside. This activates a whole circuit so that the bacterium produces more transporters to capture as much iron as possible.
