Explaining natural wonders: bacterial intelligence (Animals)

by David Turell , Monday, June 05, 2017, 17:57 (2727 days ago) @ dhw

DAVID: Stop twisting my words. Antibiotics are a natural material. We have discovered and used them. Bacteria have survived without difficulty even though they are present, and they do that because they have alternative pathways to use if they are attacked. Since bacteria are representatives of the earliest life, we should conclude they came with those defense mechanisms.

dhw: According to your hypothesis, 3.8 billion years ago your God preprogrammed some bacteria to switch on the correct alternative pathways (= defense mechanisms) to combat current human use of materials to kill them. If he preprogrammed them, did he do so without knowing that they would create the circumstances in which they would need to be preprogrammed to switch on the correct pathway to combat current human use of materials to kill them?

There are many examples of bacteria fighting bacteria with antibiotic weapons. Here is another:

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/49590/title/Microbe-from-Yogurt-I...

"Lactobacillus parafarraginis KU495926, extracted from yogurt, hindered the growth of 14 multidrug-resistant and so-called extended spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) bacteria obtained from infected patients at a Washington D.C. hospital,

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"ESBL bacteria make beta-lactamase enzymes, which promote resistance to certain broad-spectrum antibiotics. The researchers found that L. parafarraginis, a gram-positive microbe, produced a substance, likely a bacteriocin—a type of antimicrobial protein—that inhibited the gram-negative ESBL and multidrug-resistant pathogens. According to lead author Rachelle Allen-McFarlane, a graduate student in Broderick Eribo’s lab at Howard, this may be one of few known examples of gram-positive bacteria-derived bacteriocins inhibiting the growth of gram-negative bacteria.

"Typically, bacteriocins from one particular strain are only capable of inhibiting closely related strains, Allen-McFarlane tells The Scientist. Most of the time, “gram-positive kills gram-positive,” she explains. 

"Though it’s rare, it is possible. “My area of interest is to identify bacteriocins from lactic acid bacteria that are capable of inhibiting multi-drug resistant and ESBL gram-negative bacteria,” she says.

"To examine whether the metabolic products produced by L. parafarraginis could inhibit ESBL and drug-resistant bacteria, the researchers first demonstrated that metabolites derived from L. parafarraginis could hinder pathogenic growth in culture. Once they demonstrated this was possible, they verified their findings using flow cytometry and fluorescent microscopy. These experiments revealed that when certain pathogens, including wound-derived E. coli, were added to media containing L. parafarraginis metabolites, their growth was significantly inhibited.

"Next, using PCR, the researchers identified four bacteriocin structural genes in L. parafarraginis, and as a final step, verified that this bacterium was indeed capable of producing the proteins."

Comment: It stands to reason these chemical warfare antibiotics go back to the beginning of life. Beta lactamase is the chemical enzyme that fights penicillin and its relatives. It is not intelligence, it is the weapons they have at their command.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta-lactamase