Organisms can have one cell or be very small {microbe}|.
Microbes {nanobe} can be 20 to 150 nanometers diameter, have inner and outer layers, have DNA, and have tendril-like colonies.
Soil bacteria {actinomycete} can make abyssomicin antibiotic.
Soil bacteria {myxobacteria} include Stigmatella aurantiaca, which makes myxochromide.
Bacteria {saprophyte}| can use putrefaction to get food.
Bacteria {Pelagibacter} {SAR11 gene} can have no junk DNA and use ocean carbon. Pelagibacter is in all oceans at all depths. Total mass is more than all fish. Algae use its products. If species have large populations, they can minimize DNA.
Bacteria {pleuromona} can have only 300 to 1000 genes.
Small bacteria-like cells {rickettsia} can grow in other, mostly insect, cells. Rickettsia includes typhus and Rocky Mountain spotted fever, but most rickettsias are harmless.
Bacteria {Wolbachia} can kill fruitfly eggs and live three weeks.
Rod-like bacteria {bacillus}| include anthrax, diphtheria, typhoid, tuberculosis, and leprosy bacteria.
Bacteria {Chlamydomonas} can have two front flagella, which flex and extend to pull it through water. Flagella have ten microtubule pairs, with one pair in center. Outside nine slide along central pair. Front rhodopsin-like pigment has maximum sensitivity to blue-green light. As in rhodopsin, retinal is inside the seven membrane loops.
Bacteria {E. coli bacteria} can inhabit human intestine.
sensation
E. coli can sense sugars, amino acids, toxic ions, and light, using at least twelve different membrane and cell-wall protein receptors. They can compare previous sense qualities to subsequent sense qualities over several seconds, to establish gradients. Gradients change signal strengths by varying loop structures inside receptor proteins.
Receptors signal to G-proteins, which eventually send to six flagella. Signals combine at flagella to move bacterium in same direction or stop, which causes tumbling and random direction. Movements thus find food or escape poisons.
flagella
Flagella use hydrogen-ion gradients to turn eight ratchets at 6000 rpm. Flagella can spiral clockwise or counterclockwise. Flagella can align parallel or radiate from cell in all directions. Aligning and spiraling in same rotation causes forward motion. Radiating, and spiraling in opposite rotation, causes stopping.
Bacteria {halobacteria} (Halobacterium salinarium) can have flagella. Like rhodopsin, retinal pigment lies inside seven loops through membrane. It has maximum sensitivity to orange light, because Halobacterium lives in salt marshes.
Non-invasive gram-negative rod bacteria {pseudomonas} can cause urinary tract infections, skin infections, and other infections.
Spherical bacteria {coccus}| can be streptococcus, staphylococcus, or single spheres, such as pneumonia and gonorrhea.
Spherical bacteria {staphylococcus} can form sphere clumps. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has antibiotic resistance to beta-lactams, by making enzyme that splits antibiotic. Vancomycin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (VRSA) has antibiotic resistance to beta-lactams, by five-gene cassettes that alter cell-wall receptors.
Spherical bacteria {streptococcus} can form sphere chains.
Spiral-corkscrew bacteria {spirochete} include syphilis.
Spiral bacteria {borrelia} can cause Lyme disease.
Spiral bacteria {Helicobacter pylori} can live in high-acidity human stomachs, cause peptic ulcers, trigger stomach cancers, have cylindrical bodies, and have four flagellae. They can protect against acid reflux and esophagus cancer.
genes
Genome has 1,700,000 bases, has 1550 genes, and varies by 6%. CagA gene makes CagA protein, which increases stomach-cancer probability. CagA gene region makes proteins for type IV secretion system (TFSS). TFSS can inject protein toxins into host cells, and Helicobacter injects CagA protein. In host cells, CagA changes and affects shape, secretion, and signaling. Host cells make cytokines. VacA gene makes VacA protein, which causes vacuoles and coats helper T cells.
Spiral-coil bacteria {spirilla} include cholera.
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Date Modified: 2022.0225