hey everybody dr. O'Neil here we're gonna talk about spores here a little bit so here you see on the screen I have a comparison of vegetative cells which are which are living metabolically active reproducing cells and endospores or spores which are I like to put it as they're they're basically they're living but they've been paused they're not growing they don't have a metabolic activity so let's talk about why an organism would form spores first when you put some organisms in a very hostile environment they were able to basically pause their life until things improve so the type of organisms that can form spores your spore formers are from the genus bacillus which can lead to things like anthrax and food poisoning or the genus Clostridium which can lead to tetanus and botulism and c-diff and other types of food poisoning and gas gangrene so obviously very very scary organisms and that's because if you put most organisms in a harsh environment they will die if you put spore for a normal organism in a harsh environment where it's too warm they're running out of food whatever it might be they will just wall themselves off wall themselves office spores and wait you out so as you can see here the the key here is that spores are resistant to lots and lots of things so if you put them in a hostile environment they're just gonna wait you out I won't go into the ground I already covered spore staining they don't have a metabolism they've removed almost all their water they're not growing they are just waiting for the environment to prove and prove they're waiting for a signal now we can force those signals like heat heat is the real high heat is the best way to force spores to germinate so we can kill them that's why we use really high heat when we're canning our food and in the laboratory why we use the autoclave because it can wake up these spores and kill them so let's go ahead and look at the sporulation process this process would take a few hours so you put you put one of those two types of organisms the Clostridium or the bacillus in a situation where they're not going to survive instead of making a second copy of themselves like like you they wouldn't binary fission they will make a spore copy of themselves so this is not a type of reproduction because you see you start with one vegetative cell you end with ones four there's no reproduction here other types of organisms like fungi and stuff they use spores they actually have spores budding off of them to reproduce but that's a whole different kind of spore so let's look at the sporulation process and then we'll talk about matters again a little bit so the organism makes a copy of its DNA just like it would if it was dividing a membrane forms around that DNA so it's almost like a second cell is forming but it's inside the first cell then you have the the forespore and then you have the cortex forming around it and then the endo sportcoat Step five is the key there layers and layers of protein this protein is designed to resist radiation to resist heat to resist all manner of things so it's the the fact that it has a big thick protein coat around it and it's dehydrated those are the two things that shut off its metabolism but also protect it from the environment and then out shoots a Spore so that's the sporulation process and I already mentioned it can take several hours so the Spore is not an entire cell the spore only has in it the ingredients needed to wake back up and resume metabolic activity there's DNA in it a little bit of RNA handful of enzymes couple small molecules and that's it it's only enough to turn the machinery back on to create a living vegetative cell again when the environment would improve so as far as so the opposite so now we made our sport and then how long they can they can hang out as spores before they germinate is up for debate we know it's a very long time so germination is the process of this borer we high regenerating into a living vegetative cell so we know that they have been able to germinate spores that are thousands of years old from 3000 to 7075 hundred years old for sure but there have been multiple reports where people have said they've been able to germinate spores that are millions of years old from two-and-a-half million years old to twenty thirty maybe even 40 million years old we don't know but we know it's for a very very very long time so why is this matter why is this clinically significant I would say the main thing is with seed if is a great example you don't you have no idea how many of your patients are actually already infected with seed if they have Clostridium difficile a organisms living inside of them but they're just most of them are walled office spores because the environment is pretty hostile to them there's lots of other organisms that are using up food and keeping the pH low like these types if you have a healthy gut but this is why almost every person that develops seed of infection is going to it's going to happen after antibiotics antibiotics wipeout the the competition the spores now realize now is a good time to regenerate and become vegetative cells and someone gets a C diff infection so C the infections are are very very important they kill lots of people in the United States and everywhere else so that's probably my quote unquote favorite example of concerns about spores if the other big place to be concerned about spores is with canning you can you can can your food properly but if you're not killing the spores then there then there can be some issues there now most the spores that are going to be in canned goods that survived the proper canning process are not going to cause foodborne illness but this is why you have to take canning very very seriously okay so that should be everything you know about spores sport formation and germination they're regeneration have a wonderful day be blessed