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Fighting bad bacteria by feeding on them

© Narayan Dattatray Wadadekar

There are good bacteria, which help us to survive, and improve the quality of our life. Some bacteria photosynthesize and make food available to us. They throw into the environment oxygen that we use for getting energy from the food we eat. They assimilate nitrogen and act as biofertilizers. They make gases like methane that can be used as renewable sources of energy. They cause rotting of decayed plant and animal matter and put the elements back into environment.

And there are bad bacteria that make our life miserable by causing debilitating diseases that may even prove fatal. e.g. anthrax, bacterial dysentery, botulism, cholera, diphtheria, enteritis, gas gangrene, leprosy, leptospirosis, meningitis, the Black Death or plague, pneumonia, tetanus, tuberculosis, typhoid, trachoma, and a host of sexually transmitted diseases - like chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis.

Though millions of people and animals get killed because of pathogenic bacteria many more survive their attacks. Some may not even show any symptoms of bacterial invasions into their systems. How does our body take care of so many tiny beings entering into our bodies either through natural openings like mouth, nose, urinary and genital tract etc. or through wounds, fissures, cracks, bruises etc.

The number of dust particles entering our homes all the time can give you some idea of how and how many microbes must be entering into our bodies.

Our body has specialized cells called macrophages. A macrophage moves like an amoeba does. i.e. by producing pseudopodia. Feet that grow and all body matter which squeezes into such a foot. They can squeeze in or out of a blood capillary through the gaps between cells lining the capillary. (You may find more details on amoeboid movement - http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/our_... )

Such cells which eat microbes and remove them are called phagocytic cells and they are in several of our organs and body parts like -blood, lymph, liver, kidney, skin, spleen, joint cavity (synovial cavity), lungs, bone marrow, brain and spinal cord. These cells roam about and can be seen in any live part of the body. Cells in a human body, which are involved in destruction of microbes either by physically eating them up or chemically rendering them harmless, are the - neutrophils, eosinophils, basophils, Kupffer cells, Langerhans cells, monocytes, Natural Killer cells, Clara cells, Granstein cells, Helper T cells also known as CD4 cells, cytotoxic T cells, B cells, Cytotoxic T cells also known as CD8 cells or killer T cells, mast cells, dendritic cells etc. Let us consider how they do their job in the next article.

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