Beggiatoa Bacteria Love Rotten Eggs

You may not like rotten-egg smell, actually hydrogen sulfide H2S, but Beggiatoa love it. They get their energy from using sunlight to oxydize hydrogen sulfide to elemental sulfur. They are photosynthetic gamma proteobacteria. They are long and skinny filaments. This shot was taken from a Heron's Head Park Salt Marsh pond sample, San Francisco Bay. A Swift FM-31 Field Microscope was used with a Sony DSC-W7 Cybershot Digital Camera. If you are wandering the salt marsh and you get the faint whiff of rotten eggs, you can be sure Beggiatoa are nearby. You can also be thankful - without Beggiatoa and their relatives, that faint whiff might be powerful enough to knock you down. If you look closely at these bacteria, you will see little golden sulfur particles in them.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• science
• ecology
• bacteria
• microscope
• pond
• salt
• marsh
• sulfide

[7Row7enn7]

I wish they could make videos like this with even smaller organisms... Like viruses (though many don't think they're alive).

[debunker1905]

Viruses are live organisms.

[WLanier]

Before we get into "live" vs. "not live", let us be clear: Viruses are composed of few molecules, so they are very small; viruses cannot reproduce or carry out metabolism absent a host cell; viruses take over the host cellular machinery to do everything from reading their own genetic code to reproducing their genes to building viral proteins and other molecules and assembling the progeny viruses. A virus is but packaged genes, either RNA or DNA, plus tools to invade a host cell.

[WLanier]

No videos, but various electron microscopes can be used to take photomicrographs of viruses at very high magnifications. Use Google "image" to search the words "bacteriophage" and "virus". There are some lovely pictures of bacterial viruses [bacteriophage] on the first and second pages that pop up. There are also drawings made from electron microscope images.

[jen112233445566]

the worm looking thing r cyanobacteria right?? and the boat looking one is a diatom??

[WLanier]

You are correct, but "Cyanobacteria" is a wide and inclusive term for ancient photosynthetic bacteria. "Beggiatoa" is the name for a group of the Cyanobacteria that require hydrogen sulfide. They use the energy of sunlight to remove the hydrogen, releasing sulfur. Look up Beggiatoa in Wikipedia for more. Diatoms do look like boats - you can read about Diatoms on Wikipedia, too.

[7Row7enn7]

Thanks.

[mannyjabah]

The bacteria is growing I can tell.

[WLanier]

Beggiatoa are salt marsh bacteria. Other bacteria that live on decaying material in salt marsh ponds release hydrogen sulfide. Beggiatoa require this hydrogen sulfide. There are probably more than 100-million species of bacteria, of which less than 100 cause human disease. If you encounter bacteria, the odds are 1:1,000,000 that they will cause disease! As far as is known, Beggiatoa cause no human diseases.

[purplejane13]

hey wheer can they be found and what kind of sicknes can they develop upon us?