With bacteria rapidly developing resistance to antibiotics, it becomes increasingly important to know the difference, because viruses cannot be treated with antibiotics, or bacteria with antivirals.
Rapid and effective testing is essential, so that we can treat the invading microorganisms.
COVID-19 teaches us the hard way — we don’t have treatment for new viruses until we have anti-viral drugs and specifically targeted vaccines.
Therapies developed for existing viruses are often ineffective, or unusable, against new viruses. To date, the best weapons are hand washing and physical distance.
At the biological level, the main difference is that bacteria are free -living cells that can live inside or outside the body, whereas viruses are a collection of non -living molecules that require a host to survive.
Many bacteria help us: they live in our gut to digest and help absorb food, repairing nitrogen and organic matter that is broken down in the soil. In addition, not all viruses are bad — now we know there are also beneficial viruses in the gut, skin and blood that can kill unwanted bacteria and more harmful viruses.
Bacteria and viruses are all around us :
Bacteria and viruses may not be visible to the human eye, but they are around in astonishing numbers.
In our oceans, there are 10 billion times more bacteria than stars in the universe.
Millions of viruses around the world will be up to 100 million light-years away.
Microorganisms, which live harmlessly, and in our body, exceed the number of human cells by 10 to 1, which play an important role in human health.
But not all microorganisms are in harmony with us. Pathogens are a subset of microorganisms that can cause disease and include representatives of bacteria, fungi, viruses, helminths and protozoa.
1% of the world’s known microbial population is known to be pathogenic to humans - approximately 1400 species.
What are bacteria?
Bacteria are free living cells that can live inside or outside the body.
There are two types of bacteria: Gram-negative and Gram-positive. The main difference is the presence of an extra outer membrane in Gram-negative bacteria. This is an extra line of defense that makes antibiotics more difficult to penetrate, making Gram-negative bacteria more difficult to kill and more susceptible to resistance.
Bacteria are abundant in the soil, occupying the plant’s root system to provide services like nitrogen fixation or acting as an antifungal agent. Thermophilic (heat -like) bacteria convert sulfur to produce sulfides and energy for photosynthesis in aquatic sediments or organically rich water.
Harmful bacteria live in the soil, a good reason to wear garden gloves.
Harmful bacteria also live in the soil, making it a good reason to wear garden gloves. Floods in northern Queensland in 2019 brought Burkholderia pseudomallei to the surface, a bacterium that causes a serious infection called melioidosis.
In our body, bacteria live in the human digestive system, live in the skin and contribute to energy metabolism, digestion, brain function and general well -being. But if the bacterial balance is caused by a dose of antibiotics or ill health, then intestinal discomfort or skin infections are common.
Infectious diseases caused by bacteria have killed more than half of all humans that have ever lived on Earth. Historically, bacterial infections have started major pandemics such as the bubonic plague, which is estimated to have killed 50-60 percent of Europe’s population during the Black Death in the 14th century.
Bacteria reproduce primarily by binary fission
This short generation time allows mutations to emerge and accumulate rapidly and rapidly causing significant changes in the bacteria, such as resistance to antibiotics.
Communication gives bacteria some higher organism qualities.
This process gives the bacteria some of the higher organism qualities and is a powerful weapon against antibiotics. It can cause some bacteria to die and become inactive when exposed to antibiotics, and can regenerate when antibiotics disappear.
What are viruses?
A virus is a collection of different types of molecules that consists of genetic material (one or double strands of DNA or RNA) with a protein coat and sometimes a layer of fat as well (an envelope).
They can assume a variety of shapes and sizes — designs of spacecraft, spirals, cylinders and ball shapes.
Viruses that are covered in a layer of fat (such as SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19) can be more easily killed by easy hand washing, because soap disrupts this layer of fViruses must enter living cells (such as human cells) in order to reproduce, and once they are inside, they invade all cellular machines and force those cells to create new viruses.at.
Viruses cannot reproduce on their own (unlike bacteria) so they are not considered ‘alive’, but can live on the surface for different levels of time.
A virus is a collection of non-living molecules that requires a host in order to survive.
Viruses must enter living cells (such as human cells) in order to reproduce, and once they are inside, they invade all cellular machines and force those cells to create new viruses.
Viruses causing diseases include the flu, herpes simplex virus, Ebola, Zika and the common cold.
Viruses can be quite selective about where they live and reproduce - many viruses do not infect humans. Some viruses only infect bacteria, some only infect plants, and many only infect animals.
However, the virus can evolve to jump into humans. This often happens with influenza: for example bird flu or swine flu that originates in birds and pigs and can infect humans. SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, may have jumped into humans from bats.
The life cycle of a virus can be divided into the following stages: entry of the virus into the host cell; viral genome replication; production of new viral proteins; accumulates the viral proteins into a new virus and then is released from the host cell (by killing the cell or by sprouting from the host cell membrane) ready to infect the new cell.
Why is it so important to tell the difference?
Molecular devices enhance a physician’s ability to identify viral or bacterial infections more quickly and efficiently — hopefully so that physicians can test patients at GP surgery or in an emergency and immediately determine if the disease is caused by a virus or bacteria.
The goal is to make rapid tests available in GP surgeries.
This is also why you should not expect your doctor to prescribe antibiotics if you have a viral infection such as the common cold.
Researchers at IMB are working on ways to be able to capture and identify bacteria from an infection within a few hours — now it takes several days.
Take advantage of these molecular powerhouses
Researchers are redesigning the design of lethal bacteria and viruses to find ways to end the infection cycle.
Currently, a vaccine is being developed to protect us from COVID-19.
Vaccines show the immune system an important part of the virus so that the immune system can prepare the tools to fight the real virus effectively — vaccines trick the immune system into responding as it did before seeing the virus.
The most studied of these immune ‘tools’ are antibodies, which prevent viruses from entering new cells. But the immune system also creates killer cells, which stop viral replication by killing the infected host cells.
Traditional vaccines are weak or inactive forms of the virus.
There are many potential vaccine candidates in the global pipeline, created using a variety of new technologies.
The vaccine technology includes the use of a subunit vaccine: researchers create a viral protein and put it in the body, so that the immune system makes antibodies to the viral protein.
This method is usually safer and faster than using live or inactive viruses.
Other technologies trick the body into making its own viral proteins, including the delivery of RNA in liposomes or DNA plasmids in nanoparticles, as well as modified safe viruses and existing vaccines.
By studying the life cycle of a virus and how the virus is detected by the immune system, we can find new ways to target viruses and treat viral diseases even without vaccines.
Bacterial and viral infections are often associated
When bacterial and viral infections are different, but often related.
Severe cases of viral pneumonia often result in an associated bacterial infection. This is especially true with COVID-19, where up to 50% of hospitalized patients develop a bacterial infection. So, even if COVID-19 is caused by a virus, antibiotics are absolutely essential to treat the associated bacterial infections.
Because antibiotic -resistant bacteria are becoming an increasingly global problem, researchers at IMB are investigating the surface activity of bacteria at the molecular level and finding out how they can escape the human immune system. He is also working to develop new therapies to treat resistant bacteria, and is working to help researchers around the world discover new antibiotics.
We are now moving forward to develop preventive therapies, biomarkers and vaccines to prevent these elusive microbial killers from invading this world.
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