Anthrax: Pathogenic Bacterium (Research Paper Sample)

Topic: Pathogenic Bacterium
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The term pathogenic means the ability of any microorganism to cause disease in host organism while a bacterium is a single celled living microorganism. Pathogenic bacterium is bacteria that can or cause diseases in animals, plants insects or human beings. Bacteria’s have been studied widely especially the ones that cause diseases in humans.
There are many kinds of bacteria. They are classified based on their traits, shape, and ability to form spores, nutritional requirements and reaction to the Gram stain. The most common pathogenic bacteria are Streptococcus, Staphylococcus, Tuberculosis, Escherichia coli and Salmonella species. Pathogenic bacteria cause diseases and infections in different ways. There are those that are intracellular which cause diseases when they enter the human body and those that are conditional and are virulent when conditions are favorable. A good example is Staphylococcus Aureus. It plays a crucial role on our skins as it protects the skin from other bacteria, but when it gets under the skin it causes abscesses that are very painful and also secrete toxins that can cause life-threatening conditions like the shock syndrome.
Humans host a wide range of bacteria at a given time; Streptococci grow in chains and are responsible for several diseases such as rheumatic fever, scarlet fever, and impetigo. Some of these bacteria’s attack and invade the host when the environment favors them. In the case of an open wound for example, Clostridium tetani which is responsible of causing a disease called tetanus, others are opportunistic and thrive when the immune system is compromised to cause infections and diseases. These organisms can and are spread in many ways allowing them to move from one person to another, hence making it difficult to control their spread except with vaccinations, use of antibiotics and good hygienic practices. There has been great improvement in controlling spread and infections caused by bacteria. Recently some bacteria have become drug resistant as they have mutated making it difficult kill them with the normal antibiotics hence increasing the agony on how to treat them. This mutation of microorganism has developed a different twist as emergence of new strains with a high virulence capability and drug resistant.
According to John (2014), an epidemic in Central and South America in 1991-1992 cholera killed over 6,000 people and 700,000 people ill. The disease is caused by Vibrio cholera that is characterized my immense diarrhea leading to body dehydration thus leading to death incase the water and salt are not replenished.
Aerobic Gram - positive bacteria like Bacillus anthracis that causes anthrax produce proteins exotoxins that change the enzymatic process otherwise destroying certain cellular structures that may result to severe effects like death. Tissue injury is one of the mechanisms that bacteria use to penetrate the host system. Some species like Staphylococcus aureus produce toxins that destroy the membrane by enzymatically digesting the phospholipids, components. Endotoxins, non-specific immunity, specific humoral and cell-mediated immunity are also mechanisms that bacteria use.
Proteobacteria is a group of Gram- negative bacteria and are divided in five categories, which are alpha-, beta-, gamma-, delta-, and epsilon proteobacteria. The most dangerous among beta proteobacteria is Neisseria Gonorrhea. It is responsible f...