Sticky bacteria and the benefits of staying stillFebruary 7, 2012, 4:19 am by Scientific American: HealthI’ve written before about the many ways that bacteria can move around. Considering that they’re just one cell long, micro-organisms have a whole range of ways to travel through their little world. Movement is useful for finding food and for changing your environment when all nearby resources have been exhausted. For bacteria that can’t move, however, or that don’t want to move, there is a second option; they can park themselves on a nearby surface and settle down to wait.There are several advantages to this. For a start, other things like food and nutrients tend to accumulate at surfaces as well, bringing the bacteria a regular supply of food. A surface is a more stable environment, the bacteria that adhere to your teeth do so because to get swept away into the stomach is to be pulled down into a very literal lake of acid. For bacteria that form biofilms , sticking to a surface is the first stage in this process. [More]
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