Your body is being hijacked. You're no longer in control. Microscopic entities are flooding through your systems and using your own cells against you.
What is happening? How do you stop these foreign invaders? Well, it depends. Let's take a step back and ask, what is attacking you? Is the pathogen a virus or a bacteria?
This single question could be the difference between life and death. There are ways to kill bacteria that would not kill a virus, and vice versa. So let's take a look at what the similarities and differences are between a virus and a bacteria.
Knowing the difference could save your life. Both bacteria and viruses are microscopic, meaning they are too small to see with the naked eye. But they can enter your body through any opening, but most often they enter through the nose and mouth.
Are bacteria and viruses living things? This is the first distinction between the two pathogens that we'll make. Bacteria is most certainly alive.
In order to be classified as a living thing, something must have five traits. The traits are, it's made of cells. It grows and reproduces, it responds to stimuli in the environment, it can pass on genetic information, and it must maintain homeostasis, or an internal balance. If just one of those characteristics is missing, it is not considered a living thing.
Bacteria meet all of the requirements. They are made of a single cell that divides to reproduce, and maintains homeostasis as their environment changes. Bacteria are likely the most diverse kingdom of living things on the planet.
There are billions of different bacteria species. Not only that. There are trillions of bacteria in your body right now.
Bacteria in your body outnumber your own cells by about ten to one. Think about how crazy that is. Just in sheer numbers there are more bacteria in you than your own cells. Biology is fascinating.
This brings up a really good point though. If there are so many bacteria in you, why aren't you dead, or at least sick all the time? Aren't bacteria harmful to your body? For anyone who has had food poisoning caused by bacteria, you wished you were dead at the time.
Recently scientists have discovered that bacteria play an important role in making up your body's microbiome. Bacteria are actually beneficial in many ways. They can help you digest foods and keep your skin healthy.
We have come to realize that bacteria actually make your life better. Without a healthy microbiome of bacteria in your body you wouldn't be able to eat certain foods and you would become sick more often. We now know bacteria are living things. They are single-celled and they have all of the characteristics of life. They are diverse and found everywhere around the world.
Bacteria can be harmful, but they are also beneficial to your body. So are viruses the same way? The short answer is no. Viruses and bacteria have more differences than similarities. Let's start with what seems like a basic question.
Are viruses alive? Well, it's complicated. Depending on who you ask in the scientific community, you will get different answers. Viruses are in a gray area between living and non-living things.
For example, they cannot reproduce without hijacking the cells of a host. This means they don't really have the characteristics of reproduction. All other living things can reproduce without taking over another organism's cells and using it for their own purposes. Living things either find a mate and reproduce, like humans, or split in two using a form of asexual reproduction, like bacteria. Viruses can't do either of these things.
Another characteristic of a living thing is that they respond to their environment. Viruses again are in a weird gray area where they don't so much respond to their environment as change it. Viruses change the genetic code of cells to suit their needs. They can cause cells to make copies of themselves, along with protein shells that carry them to new cells to infect. Viruses are tricky both in the ways that they use our cells against us and identifying if they are a living thing or not.
They on the other hand will respond to their environment. They'll make more copies of themselves when there's an abundance of resources, or swap their genetic code with another bacteria around them if a beneficial trait arises that helps the species survive. Evolution by natural selection also is an important concept when discussing living things. All living things evolved from a species in the past.
You, me, bacteria, we all evolved from an organism that started life on this planet billions of years ago. Granted, you and bacteria went through many different changes and evolutionary steps, But humans and bacteria both evolved from earlier species. This is just how life works on our planet.
Viruses again blur the line here. Viruses most definitely do change over time. This is why you have to get a different flu shot every year.
Although viruses are missing several characteristics of a living thing, they do seem to evolve, and they seem to evolve fast. Species evolve when a mutation in DNA occurs that gives an organism a new trait. Infections are random mistakes in the DNA.
Some are good and some are bad, and some don't have any effect on an organism's survival at all. But with viruses it would see mutations happen so often and so rapidly that a new form of a virus can evolve almost overnight. Are bacteria living things?
Yes they are. Are viruses living things? Ehhh, they straddle the line between living and non-living.
Us, humans, like to make things clear cut and binary. Yes or no, unfortunately viruses don't fit into one category or another, which can scare and frustrate us. So we talked about the benefits of bacteria, but you may be wondering, do viruses give us any benefits?
Or are they just little hijacking machines that make us sick? Well one benefit of viruses is that weak or less harmful ones can help boost your immune system. If you get the common cold it makes you a little sick. Your body may develop a resistance to a more malicious virus with a similar genetic makeup.
In this case your body would be better able to fight off the new virus thanks to the weaker virus that you got earlier in your life. But let's talk about one of the coolest benefits a virus can have for you. Let's talk about bacteriophages.
A bacteriophage is a virus that kills bacteria. It targets a specific type of bacteria, infiltrates it, takes it over, and destroys it. It's pretty awesome when you think about it, like little microscopic warfare happening inside your body. Imagine you have a harmful bacteria multiplying away inside of you.
It's making you sick and causing a lot of distress. Then, a virus that has been laying dormant in the mucous lining of your gastrointestinal tract awakes from its slumber. The viruses start attacking the harmful bacteria by injecting them with their genetic code and taking over. Eventually, the bacteriophages kill all the harmful bacteria and are either evacuated from your system or lie dormant again, waiting for their next victim.
That is pretty cool stuff if you ask us. Bacteriophages are viruses that only kill bacteria, so they pose no threat to your cells. As of yet we know of no bacteria that kills viruses, but there are countless different viruses that kill bacteria. There is one last aspect of viruses that make them unique and different from bacteria, and we promise that biology is fascinating and if we haven't already delivered we are about to. When viruses infect us and hijack our cells they can embed small chunks of their DNA into our DNA.
Although this is rare, it has been happening for millions of years. So, over time the viral DNA that snuck into the human DNA has accumulated. Your DNA right now is actually comprised of around 10% virus DNA.
Think about that, one tenth of the genetic code that makes you is actually virus DNA. Like mutations, the chunks of viral DNA in our genome were inserted randomly. Some is harmful, such as viral DNA that can cause cancer. Other pieces of viral DNA have been beneficial to us humans over our evolutionary history. There is evidence that some of the virus DNA in our genome helped the development of the human placenta.
Also, if you enjoy eating cereal, bread, or any other food high in starch, you can thank viruses for providing humans with a gene that allows us to digest the complex sugar. Viral DNA is responsible for creating starch-digesting enzymes in our pancreas cells. Without virus DNA in our genome, we would all be on a starch-free diet right now. Vibes are beneficial to humans in lots of ways.
most especially in shaping our microbiome and digestion of food. However, only viruses can claim the honor of changing our DNA and influencing the course of human evolution. Have we mentioned how cool biology is yet? Now let's talk about the differences in preventing or killing viruses and bacteria. The first and most important distinction to make when treating a pathogen is to identify if it is a virus or bacteria.
This is important because only certain medicines work for certain types of pathogens. Antibiotics are used to kill bacteria. Antibiotics will only kill bacteria, hence the name anti meaning against and biotic meaning living.
So, antibiotics are only used to kill living things, in this case bacteria. Since viruses are complicated and don't reproduce using cellular division, antibiotics have no effect on them. It's important that you can distinguish between viruses and bacteria to make informed decisions about medication being recommended for an illness.
We all know bacteria are living things. All living things are subject to the pressures of natural selection. When the environment of a bacteria changes, let's say an antibiotic is introduced, the bacteria will be killed by it.
That is, unless a random mutation allows one bacteria to become resistant, and therefore able to fight off the antibiotic. If this happens, that species of bacteria will keep on multiplying and could lead to severe illness or death. Antibiotic resistance is a process that is driven by natural selection. The bacteria can literally evolve in your body to become resistant to antibiotics.
This is why it is so important to take the correct dosage, for the correct amount of When prescribed antibiotics by your doctor. Even if you stop showing symptoms, you must complete your antibiotic regimen because if you don't, the bacteria you were trying to kill are more likely to develop resistance to that antibiotic. We see this in certain parts of the world with tuberculosis. Like we've said, living things tend to evolve over time, otherwise that species would go extinct. Bacteria are no exception.
So if antibiotics only kill bacteria, how do we kill viruses? There are two types of medicines that doctors use. The first is antiviral medication. The drugs must be administered within a certain time frame and are only effective while the medicine is in the patient's system.
When you travel to areas of the world with yellow fever, you can take an antiviral yellow fever drug. You have to take the pills as prescribed by your doctor before and during your trip in to be affected. The antiviral uses chemicals that kill the virus, but only if those chemicals are in your system when the virus infiltrates your body. Vaccines can be used to prevent or kill both the virus or bacteria.
Every vaccine is different and made to kill one type of pathogen. Vaccines typically use a weakened or dead form of the pathogen to activate the immune system. When the weakened or dead pathogen enters your body, your immune system identifies it and makes antibodies that mark it for destruction.
After your immune system comes into contact with the vaccine, It will remember what the virus or bacteria looked like, so if you are ever infected with the actual pathogen your body already has immunity to it. Then your immune system will do what it does best and destroy the pathogen before it can make you sick. Vaccines work the same way against bacteria and viruses.
We have learned a lot over the years about viruses and bacteria. We know that they have some similarities but are also different in many ways. It is thanks to scientists and doctors that we know so much and can protect ourselves from harmful pathogens.
like bacteria and viruses. It's also thanks to scientists and doctors that we understand the importance bacteria and viruses can play in human evolution and health. What it comes down to is that biology is cool, and scientists are awesome, and that's why when scientists and doctors recommend certain precautions to prevent a disease, we should all listen. If you are team virus, then check out our video Why Spanish Flu Killed Over 50 Million People, Deadliest Plague in Modern History.
If you're on team bacteria, check out Why Would a Scientist Inject Himself with 3.5 million year old bacteria, just to make sure you wash your hands with soap and hot water for 20 seconds after finishing the videos.