Bacteria: Not Just Your Average Pathogens!
Are all Bacteria the bad guys? No, not by a long shot. We all know about one of these good guys- the gut bacteria. Now, another friendly bacterium in is town: Wolbachia. It is a gram-negative bacterium which is present in/infects arthropods.
Wolbachia does not per se cause any disease but on the contrary benefits its host in innumerable ways. One latest finding records how it protects its host organism from other infections. They safeguard these organisms from diseases which is quiet amazing, given how easily organisms can contract infections in the wild, even while feeding.
Researchers from the University of Edinburgh studied fruit flies which were carrying this bacterium. The study confirms that the bacterium which has been previously established to provide protection to insect species does the same in case of flies. They found the insects carrying Wolbachia which then contracted another infection through feeding, fought the disease better than those control insects which had the same infection injected into their bodies. When infected with another bacterial infection, either orally or by injection, flies that carried the bacterium which had been infected orally were best able to fight the disease.
Further digging
showed these fruit flies’ immune systems had triggered a production of antimicrobial and detoxifying molecules in response to the infection.What is interesting here is that this finding was observed in flies that had been infected orally, but not in those infected via an injection.
“Most experimental studies employ artificial routes of infection, and we may be missing out on important aspects of biology. Understanding more about the impact of contracting infection through natural routes could add to our body of knowledge about immune responses and disease”, states Dr Pedro Vale, of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Biological Sciences, who led the study.
