Current Event
Petra 6A
Science
Mrs. M.
3/8/12
Good Bacteria, Bad Bacteria
There are so many harmful bacteria, but there are also very helpful bacteria. When bad bacteria are attacking the body and causing sickness, there is the immune system which fights the sickness, but how on earth does the immune system know good from bad? Scientists from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine have found a special white cell called macrophage, which is one of the first to find the harmful cells and kill them. They found that a protein called “NLRP7” finds out if a bacterium is good or bad. It kind of acts as a little “scout” that searches the different aspects of the bacterium and decides whether it’s good or not. Finally understanding how the body fights these little creatures could lead us to, in the future, maybe solving the problems of brain disease.
My Thoughts
I think that it is amazing that this has been discovered. I found it really interesting to read, it was a topic that I found myself pulled into, probably because I like to understand things that go on in the world I live in. The fact that we might, one day, be able to cure brain disease excites me, but it also troubles me. Diseases of all sorts are on this Earth for a reason. If we suddenly cured all sicknesses and diseases in the world, not so many people would die! Yeah, I know, you’re probably all thinking: ‘But isn’t that a good thing?’ Well, let me ask you, how many people do we have in the world today? That’s right, 7 billion+. And how many more people would be added to that figure if there were tons of fewer deaths? That’s just something to think about when you’re reading things like this… J
No comments:
Post a Comment