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Posted: February 6, 2004
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Microbes can be thugs. A bacterium that lives in our intestines is a particularly nasty fellow. Unable to reproduce on its own, the bacterium burrows into another microbe, killing it and using the remains to make offspring. The composite image below shows how the killer microbe, called Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus, reproduces.
But even thugs have their good sides. Not only does the bacterium kill human pathogens, but it may ultimately teach scientists how to fight harmful microbes. The genome of the Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus bacterium has just been sequenced, and scientists hope to find genes involved in the thuggish behavior.
The victim in the image is the bacterium Pseudomonas pudita, which is related to a bacterium that infects the lungs of people with cystic fibrosis.
All images courtesy Stephan Schuster. — Edward R. Winstead
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