• Question: if you had a chance to be a bacteria what would you be and why?

    Asked by sibelkoseer19 to Jack, Jon, Tom, Yalda on 8 Mar 2013. This question was also asked by sadepaulo24.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 8 Mar 2013:

      I’d be something called Nitrosomonas. It’s one of the bacteria that changes ammonia into nitrite, and it’s a good bacteria to have in a fish tank as it turns the fish pee into something less toxic – and swimming in your own pee can’t be a good thing.

    • Photo: Jon Marles-Wright

      Jon Marles-Wright answered on 8 Mar 2013:

      I’d be Halothiobacillus, they can eat concrete and have a really neat structure inside them that allows them to turn carbon dioxide into sugar. They evolved this ability before photosynthetic bacteria and plants.

    • Photo: Tom Branson

      Tom Branson answered on 9 Mar 2013:

      Well I would be “Streptococcus pyogenes”, which is not a nice variety of bacteria. If it gets in through cuts in your skin and really takes hold it can start to eat away at your body causing “necrotizing fasciitis”.

      This is known as flesh-eating bacteria! So watch out!

    • Photo: Jack Heal

      Jack Heal answered on 10 Mar 2013:

      There’s a bacteria called Vibrio fischeri which is found in squids. It lives in a squid’s gut and makes some proteins which make the squid glow in the dark. This means the squids don’t cast a shadow on moonlit nights and so they are hard to predators to detect. So the bacteria helps the squid to live, and by eating the stuff in the squid’s guts, the squid helps the bacteria too. I’d be one of those, it sounds like a friendly set-up.

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