noun
definition
A type, species, or strain of bacterium.
definition
A derisive term for a lowlife or a slob (could be treated as plural or singular).
noun
definition
A single celled organism with cell walls but no nucleus or organelles.
Examples of bacteria in a Sentence
Venter's plan is to use bacteria to brew fuel, much like we brew beer today.
Bacteria can process toxic wastes and oil spills into harmless biodegradable materials.
The airborne bacteria infected all of the people on the trip.
The bacteria, in most cases, have no definite nucleus or central body.
The next time you buy hand soap, try to find the kind that kills bacteria so we can prevent illnesses.
They surround individual bacteria, absorb them into their substance, and ultimately destroy them by digestion.
At the same time in Germany, Robert Koch identified the bacteria that caused tuberculosis and the one that caused cholera.
Many bacteria are known which are capable of denitrification, some of them being abundant in fresh dung and upon old straw.
Pasteur first formulated the idea that bacteria are responsible for the diseases of fermented liquids; the corollary of this was a demand for pure yeast.
In the first stage the ammonium compounds are oxidized to nitrites by the agency of very minute motile bacteria belonging to the genus Nitrosomonas.
Bacteria, which are very simple organisms, can be found in every type of ecosystem of the planet.
The bacteria that causes rain scald is called Dermatophilus congolensis.
Chalybeate waters, pools in marshes near irons one, &c., abound in bacteria,, some of which belong to the remarkable genera Crenothrix, Cladothrix and Leptothrix, and contain ferric oxide, i.e.
Special wound-cork is also often formed round accidental injuries so as to prevent the rotting of the tissues by the soaking in of rain and the entrance of fungal spores and bacteria.
This property of living substance can be proved in the case of the cells of the higher plants, but it is especially prominent in many of the more lowly organisms, such as the Bacteria.
If this is admitted the poverty of tropical sea-water in mineral nitrogen compounds is explained by the higher temperature, which accelerates the activity of denitrifying bacteria.
Phagocytes act as scavengers in ridding the body of noxious particles, and more especially of harmful bacteria.
The bacteria, which are present in almost all soils, enter the root-hairs of their host plants and ultimately stimulate the production of an excrescent nodule, in which they live.
During this period the bacteria multiply and most of them assume a peculiar thickened or branched form, in which state they are spoken of as bacteroids.
From that time the question of the pleomorphism (mutability of shape) of the bacteria has been hotly discussed; but it is now generally agreed that, while a various forms of bacteria and the and their arrangement.
The plate was then incubated, and, as the figure shows, the bacteria on the C-shaped area were all killed, whereas they developed elsewhere on the plate (traces of the B are just visible to the right) and covered it with an opaque growth.
Similarly nascent methane may reduce iron salts, and the black mud in which these bacteria often occur owes its colour to the FeS formed.
In the deeper parts of this zone the bacteria absorb the SH 2, and, as they rise, oxidize it and store up the sulphur; then ascending into planes more highly oxygenated, oxidize the sulphur to SO 3.
These bacteria therefore employ SH 2 as their respiratory substance, much as higher plants employ carbohydrates - instead of liberating energy as heat by the respiratory combustion of sugars, they do it by oxidizing hydrogen sulphide.
These actions are of extreme importance in nature, as their continuation results in the enormous deposits of bog-iron ore, ochre, and - since Molisch has shown that the iron can be replaced by manganese in some bacteria - of manganese ores.
Considerable advances in our knowledge of the various chromogenic bacteria have been made by the studies of Beyerinck, Lankester, Engelmann, Ewart and others, and have assumed exceptional importance owing to the discovery that Bacteriopurpurin - the red colouring matter contained in certain sulphur bacteria - absorbs certain rays of solar energy, and enables the organism to utilize the energy for its own life-purposes.
Engelmann showed, for instance, that these red-purple bacteria collect in the ultra-red, and to a less extent in the orange and green, in bands which agree with the absorption spectrum of the extracted colouring matter.
Not only so, but the evident parallelism between this absorption of light and that by the chlorophyll of green plants, is completed by the demonstration that oxygen is set free by these bacteria - i.e.
Nitrogen-fixing rhizobium bacteria are located within specially formed cells of legumes such as pea and soybean.
Some bacteria make us ill (Eg salmonella causes food poisoning) but others are harmless.
The lesion of the foot is invaded by bacteria causing it to go septic.
The bacteria can then infect the blood and cause secondary septicemia, which could in turn lead to death without treatment.
Applying it immediately curbs the impulse and neutralizes bacteria and toxins.
The nitrogen in decaying roots, in the dead stems. and leaves of plants, and in humus generally is sooner or later changed into a nitrate, the change being effected by bacteria.
There is also another possible source of loss of nitrates through the activity of denitrifying bacteria.
Certain bacteria of the nitrogenfixing class enter into association with the roots of green plants, the best-known examples being those which are met with in the nodules upon the roots of clover, peas, beans, sainfoin and other plants belonging to the leguminous order.
After the decay of the roots some of the unchanged bacteria are left in the soil, where they remain ready to infect a new leguminous crop.
The nitrogen-fixing nodule bacteria can be cultivated on artificial media, and many attempts have been made to utilize them for practical purposes.
In this manner organisms obtained from red clover can be grown and applied to the seed of red clover; and similar inoculation can be arranged for other species, so that an application of the bacteria most suited to the particular crop to be cultivated can be assured.
But whatever merits they had as clarifiers of turbid water, the advent of bacteriology, and the recognition of the fact that the bacteria of certain diseases may be water-borne, introduced a new criterion of effectiveness, and it was perceived that the removal of solid particles, or even of organic impurities (which were realized to be important not so much because they are dangerous to health per se as because their presence affords grounds for suspecting that the water in which they occur has been exposed to circumstances permitting contamination with infective disease), was not sufficient; the filter must also prevent the passage of pathogenic organisms, and so render the water sterile bacteriologically.
As any bacteria present in the milk tend to multiply rapidly on the way to the consumer, it is mainly a question of the time which elapses before consumption.
Leeuwenhoek, to whom we also owe the discovery of Bacteria and ciliate Infusoria.
The schizomycetes or bacteria are minute vegetable organisms devoid of chlorophyll and multiplying by repeated bipartitions.
In the two last-mentioned characters and in their manner of division the bacteria resemble Schizophyceae (Cyanophyceae or blue-green algae), and the two groups of Schizophyceae and Schizomycetes are usually united in the class Schizophyta, to indicate the generally received view that most of the typical bacteria have been derived from the Cyanophyceae.
Nor must we overlook the possibility that the endosporeformation in non-motile bacteria more than merely resembles the development of azygospores in the Conjugatae, and some Ulothricaceae, if reduced in size, would resemble them.
The former also looks on the ordinary disjointing bacterial cell as an oidium, and it must be admitted that since Brefeld's discovery of the frequency of minute oidia and chlamydospores among the fungi, the probability that some so-called bacteria - and this applies especially to the branching forms accepted by some bacteriologists - are merely reduced fungi is increased.
That bacteria have existed from very early periods is clear from their presence in fossils; and although we cannot accept all the conclusions drawn from the imperfect records of the rocks, and may dismiss as absurd the statements that geologically immured forms have been found still living, the researches of Renault and van Tieghem have shown pretty clearly that large numbers of bacteria existed in Carboniferous and Devonian times, and probably earlier.
Any liquid (blood, urine, milk, beer, &c.) containing organic matter, or any solid food-stuff (meat preserves, vegetables, &c.), allowed to stand exposed to the air soon swarms with bacteria, if moisture is present and the temperature not ab- Distribu- normal.
Though they occur all the world over in the g Y air and on the surface of exposed bodies, it is not to be supposed that they are by any means equally distributed, and it is questionable whether the bacteria suspended in the air ever exist in such enormous quantities as was once believed.
Cohn's brilliant researches, the chief results of which were published at various periods between 1853 and 1872; Cohn's classification of the bacteria, published in 1872 and extended in 1875, has in fact dominated the study of these organisms almost ever since.