Comment on Bacteria Frozen in Ancient Underground Ice Cave Found to be Resistant Against 10 Modern Antibiotics

• 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.

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  • 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.

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    • dgdft@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      How are you distinguishing those ideas?

      Are we talking about “has actually been found infecting human patients”?

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      • 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.

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