When it comes to survival, even microbes know the benefit of teamwork.
Your Back Page scrawler has a grudging respect for bacteria.
They’ve been kicking around for pretty much as long as this planet has been and there’s unknowable gazillions of them surviving and thriving in every imaginable environment.
And while the bulk of these usually singled-celled critters are either beneficial to human folks or essentially harmless, it’s the troublemakers like e.coli and friends that get all the publicity.
Which is disappointing, because despite their ubiquity, we big-brained naked apes know surprisingly little about the vast majority of these single-minded organisms.
But thanks to some new research from boffins at Flinders University, a small ray of insight has been shed onto how some of these little beasties like to behave.
In a study published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers tell of examining the migration of microbial communities over long distances and the surprising outcomes that were revealed.
In an experiment that involved sewage, coloured dyes, nutrient gels and garden tubing, bought from a hardware store, the Flinders team were able to track the movement and migration of microbial communities over long periods and long distances, as well as analysing the taxonomic composition and gene profiles of the bacteria.
What the researchers discovered was that a subset of the original sewage-based community “broke away and self-organised into migrating bands that were visible to the naked eye”.
This suggested that bacteria are able migrate over considerable distances – not as solitary swimmers, but in “diverse, coordinated communities”, the researchers said in a media release.
What’s more, the migrating bands of bugs also brought along viruses and “hitchhiking” microbes that were not able to swim independently.
The researchers also found that bacterial bands increased in speed as they travelled, with the journey acting as “a natural filter that selects bacteria which are the strongest swimmers and most efficient at accessing nutrients to fuel the microbial community’s forward momentum”.
“Our findings show that bacteria aren’t just swimming to outrun the viruses that infect them,” Flinders PhD graduate Dr Susie Grigson told media.
“Instead, they travel together to hunt for food, bringing along viruses and ‘hitchhiking’ microbes that can’t even swim on their own.”
And do these discoveries have potential real-world implications, we hear you ask?
A resounding “yes”, says the Flinders team.
“In a medical context, it [the research] provides a new framework for understanding how potentially dangerous, non-swimming pathogens could spread through the human body, or through hospitals and water systems, by hitching a ride with highly mobile communities,” they told media.
So, as we said, respect where it’s due, and migrate those antibacterial wipes over to me, thanks.
Sending story tips to Holly@medicalrepublic.com.au can be infectious.
