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Five billion years ago, our planet earth was a very unfriendly
place, very hot with carbon dioxide gas bubbled from molten
rock and filled the atmosphere, causing such a massive
greenhouse effect that the planet literally boiled dry. Living
organism could not survive under those conditions. However,
when water vapour to liquefy just less than four billion years
ago, life was said to have appeared but was not life, as we know it
now. Molecules that could replicate to produce daughter
molecules with inherited characteristics, eventually microscopic single-celled organisms evolved.
These early life forms had to withstand volatile atmosphere with toxic gases, erupting volcanoes, dramatic electrical storms
and the sun’s ultraviolet rays all promoting uncontrolled electrochemical and photochemical reactions. The microbes
resembled today’s’, a type of bacteria so called because they thrive in all the particularly hostile corners of the globe.
Extremophiles
For around three billion years, bacteria had Earth all to themselves and they diversified to occupy every possible niche. At
this stage, there was no oxygen in the atmosphere so they evolved many different ways of unlocking the energy bound up
in rocks, utilizing chemical compounds of sulphur, nitrogen and iron.
Cynobacteria
Bacteria are “prokaryotes”, meaning that their cells are smaller than those of all higher organisms “eukaryotes” and have a
simpler structure, lacking a well-defined nucleus. However, around a billion years ago, a group of free-living
photosynthetic cyanobacteria took up residence inside other primitive single-celled organisms to form the energy -
generating chloroplast of the first plant cells. In addition, in a similarly extraordinary manoeuvre, oxygen-utilizing
microbes called alpha proteobacteria (form of bacteria) became incorporated into other microbes as mitochondria, the
power house of animal cells.
So finally, 6oo million years ago, the stage was set for the evolution of multicellular organisms and eventually the
emergence of the plants and animals we know today.
However, compared to the diversity of bacteria, all other life forms, however different they may seem, are homogeneous,
locked into the same biochemical cycle for energy production, and requiring sunlight for plant photosynthesis to generate
the oxygen used by animals for respiration.
Although bacteria and single-celled protozoa (plasmodium) were the first to inhabit in our earth. The tiniest of all
microbes, viruses, probably also evolved several million years ago. They have diversified to infect all living things
including bacteria, but exactly how and when they came into being is unknown.
Viruses
The genetic material of viruses consists of either DNA or RNA, but most only code few proteins and cannot survive on
their own. Therefore, viruses are obligate parasites and only when they have sabotaged their host’s cells do they spring to
life. Once inside they turn the cell into a factory for virus production and within hours, thousands of new viruses are ready
to infect more cells or seek another host to colonize.
Bacteria are masters at survival, and when adverse conditions come along, they are generally ready. Adaptability is the key
to their success, yet in theory reproducing by binary fission yields offspring that are all identical to the parent—a process
that apparently leaves no room for variability. However, although their DNA copying machinery is accurate, mistakes
occur which are corrected by a cellular proofreading system. Even so, occasional errors slip through unnoticed and these
heritable changes to the genetic code (mutations) may cause changes to their offspring. This muted virus becomes a new
strain that can attack human, animals or birds, similar to the new swine flu, which jumped from birds to pigs and now
attacking human.
This is the basis of evolution by natural selection. In humans and other animal’s evolutionary change is a slow process
because of our long generation times, but for bacteria, which reproduce very fast and have a less effective DNA
proofreading system, rapid change by mutation is their lifeline. A single bacterial gene mutates at a rate of one change per -
cell divisions, so in a rapidly dividing colony many thousands of mutants are thrown up. A few of these mutations will
confer a survival advantage and these progeny will then quickly out compete their rivals and come to dominate the
population.
Of the million or so microbes in existence, only 1,415 are known to cause disease in humans. However, despite their
significance to us, these pathogenic microbes are not primarily concerned with making us ill. The devastating symptoms
they produce are really just a side - effect of their life cycle being enacted inside our bodies. However, they certainly use
each step of the infection process to their own advantage, and natural selection ensures the microbes that induce disease
patterns that are best designed to assist their reproduction and spread survive at the expense of their more sluggish siblings.
Therefore, over time disease patterns have been sharply changed by evolution to ensure the survival of the causative
microbes. A highly virulent lifestyle, killing the
victim outright, is not advantageous to microbes as
they will then be without a home and probably die
along with their host. Yet less virulent microbes risk
being rapidly conquered by the host’s immune
system, and this curtails their spread. Over centuries
of coexistence of microbes and their human host,
evolution has fine-tuned the balance between these
two extremes to optimize survival of both species,
but the rapid adaptability of microbe’s means that they are generally one-step ahead in the ongoing struggle.
How Humans Contributed to Their Destruction
Antibiotics (in the last 40 years) paved the way for doctors to develop new technologies
(IVF, plastic surgery, hip replacement, minimally invasive surgery, stents, total
parenteral nutrition’s, transplant surgery and cardiac surgery). These technologies have
made some doctors rich and famous but now the very technology is threatening our
existence in this universe.
Our politicians & media are advising us to wash hands often and companies are marketing antiseptics, germicidal soaps
and creams to kill these bugs. We know these bacteria and viruses are resistant to various chemicals and
antibiotics. Excessive use of antiseptics,
dis-infectants and washing hands will
destroy the very bacteria we need to help
us. Low concentrated chemicals tend to
make these bacteria learn to develop
resistance.
Dr Kadiyali M Srivatsa