Don't Fear the Bacteria
Bacteria often get a bad reputation as
microorganisms that cause pathology in humans among other
things. Now, not to say that bacteria do not cause great
trouble in our society, but there are bacteria out there that
we, as humans, can take advantage of. This is the case for
Streptomyces griseus, as we have been able to purify the
compounds it secretes to protect itself and in turn use it for
our own ends to purge ourselves of dangerous threats.
This
image shows how treatment can eliminate an infection but also
how drug resistant bacteria can pose huge health risks.
(Provided by The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases)
Streptomyces griseus
itself has yielded to us a golden antibiotic called streptomycin. Antibiotics are used to fight a number of infections, including the deadly necrotizing fasciitis (flesh eating bacteria). To find out more about this organism follow this link. Flesh eating bacteria. Anyway, streptomycin was the first drug to successfully counteract tuberculosis, which was an important step forward in medicine, since before this tuberculosis was not only extremely contagious, but very often fatal. However, as the image on the left suggests, there have been out breaks of drug resistant tuberculosis. This simply means that streptomycin in this case would either not work, or have a reduced effect which would allow the disease to progress. Going on a slight tangent here, Streptomyces griseus can be imagined as creating this streptomycin that either kills bacteria or at the very least keeps them away. This can be thought of like poison ivy and us but obviously the poison ivy would not be able to kill us, but we would sure try to avoid it if we saw the plant.Now, up to this point we haven't directly
discussed how these defenses work for Streptomyces griseus or how
they help us get rid of deadly bacteria in our own systems. Streptomycin
works through binding the ribosomes of the bacteria cells and disrupting
protein formation. As you can imagine, once the cell is unable to
synthesize proteins its life is very short lived. This method works both
for the opposing bacteria in the soil and in the raging tuberculosis inside
diseased humans.
All is not exactly well for humans using this
antibiotic however. As with most drugs, there are side effects. The main
one for streptomycin is possibly ototoxicity, which means damage to the
ears.
Last but not least, I'll discuss some other interesting information about Streptomyces griseus
and its prized streptomycin. With this, one of the other main antibiotics is penicillin, which revolutionized medicine.