3 ms·

We need to culture the things that infect the things that infect us.

• hyperion2010 11y ago
  Pretty much. We are completely blind to the other members of the micro ecosystem that are probably living happily on and around us under non-pathological conditions. There are theories out there that suggest that many infections are caused not by too many bad bacteria but too few or unstable populations of good bacteria (vast over simplification). In addition, we actually have quite a bit of trouble culturing bacteria that might be pathological (our inability to culture them is quite related to our inability to determine their pathological status).
• refurb 11y ago
  Bacteria that infect other bacteria? Or do you mean bacteria that produce antibacterial compounds that could be used as antibiotics? Didn't most antibiotics come from fungi? All of the -mycins came from fungi.
  • SCHiM 11y ago
    No, Bacteriophages (phages), viruses that infect and kill bacteria.
    • _0ffh 11y ago
      Didn't the Russians make some early inroads there?
    • refurb 11y ago
      Why do we need to culture certain bacteria to get the bacteriophages? Can't we just isolate those?
• _0ffh 11y ago
  We need molecular-level biochemical Models! If we could simulate what's happening in just a single bacterium, we could pre-screen drugs in a virtual petri dish. Promising compounds could then be put to real-life tests.