Geek Out: Why We All Need To Worry About Super Gonorrhoea!
Cause:
It’s worth noting that when we experience symptoms as a result of a bacterial infection, some of those symptoms will be a direct result of toxic chemicals produced by the bacteria themselves. However, some of the symptoms will be actually driven by our immune system in an attempt to destroy the organism. Fever, scientifically called pyrexia, is a good example of this. Often it’s a response created by our own body that increases our temperature to a point where bacterial cell replication decreases drastically – we fele rubbish but hopefully, the bacteria “feel” even worse!
Antibiotic:
So, strictly speaking, antibiotic really means “a drug that’s against life” but in practice it means a drug that destroys bacteria, and only bacteria.
An antibiotic won’t help you fight of an (in)flu(enza) viral infection and it won’t speed your recovery from an athlete’s food fungal infection
Bacterium:
Okay so there are a few similar looking words here so let’s make sure we’re clear on them – we most often hear the word bacteria which means more than one bacterium.
A bacterium is just a single bacterial cell but rather than say “single bacterial cell” all the time, it’s much easier just to say bacterium!
Instructions:
If you’d like to know a little more about these instructions, you might consider going back to the Genetic cook book post where we talk more about DNA and genes :)
Copy their DNA:
Bacterial cells also acquire new genes by a process called horizontal gene transfer - if you’re interested in reading more about this, take a look at this geeky but readable resource:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4536854/
Although the mechanism for transferring that mutated gene to a difference bacterial cell is a little different, the root cause of the mutated gene is always the same, accidental, careless errors when copying the original gene.
Never deliberate, never purposeful and never malicious behavior of a bacterium!
Gonorrhoea or gonorrhea:
I try to adopt consistent spelling throughout each blog post, often choosing US spelling. However (delighfully) as Body and Bones is being read in many countries today I decided to go for the UK spelling – us Brits like to add “o” to words, foetus instead of fetus, diarrhoea instead of diarrhea and gonorrhoea instead of gonorrhea!!!
Take-out:
And just in case you were wondering, I went for the American here (Brits say take-away!)
N. gonorroeae:
So first things first, even N.gonorroeae isn’t its full name, it’s short for Neisseria gonorroeae. Secondly, I didn’t just put this in italics because, well, I felt like it – there’s a scientific convention to writing the names of organisms such as bacteria.
The first name has to be capitalized and that’s the organism’s Genus, kind of like a sports team.
The second name has a small letter to start it and that’s the specific species, like which player within the sports team. Then the whole thing has to be written in italics.
So if we used the same rules to name (Tom) Brady of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, his scientific name would be Buccanneers brady and his team mate (Rob) Gronkowski would be Buccanneers gronkowski
E.coli = Escherichia coli
As with previously, the genus here is Escherichia and the specific member or species is coli.
