Comment on Bacteria Frozen in Ancient Underground Ice Cave Found to be Resistant Against 10 Modern Antibiotics
Quilotoa@lemmy.ca 2 days agoThat didn’t answer whether these particular bacteria are pathogenic.
Comment on Bacteria Frozen in Ancient Underground Ice Cave Found to be Resistant Against 10 Modern Antibiotics
Quilotoa@lemmy.ca 2 days agoThat didn’t answer whether these particular bacteria are pathogenic.
dgdft@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It does to the target audience.
What you’re missing is that Linnaean taxonomy breaks down when discussing bacteria, and the line between strain/species doesn’t really exist.
Bacteria swap a lot of genetic material asexually, including across dramatically different species. Pathogenicity can also be dramatically modulated by presence of other species and environmental conditions.
The idea of a particular strain or species of bacteria being inherently pathogenic is a weird and surprisingly flimsy one.
Quilotoa@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
I don’t want to know if these bacteria are potentially pathogenic. I want to know if they’re pathogenic.
dgdft@lemmy.world 2 days ago
How are you distinguishing those ideas?
Are we talking about “has actually been found infecting human patients”?
Quilotoa@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Yeah, I really didn’t think that through. I guess we can’t go testing them on random people.