Bacteries Lifetime

[world_events]

What is the average lifetime of bacteries on differents environments, like water, human skin, soil, etc?
What kind of bacteries do live more and why?
What can help to extent their lifetime?

 

[river-wind]

bacteries? Bacteria? Are we talking about single-cell organisms that live everywhere in the world?

If so, then bacteria can live anywhere from 30 minutes to 10,000 years: e. coli can divide every 30 minutes,creating two daughter cells, and effectively eliminating the parent cell. Some ancient bacteria have been able to shut themselves down, into a state of suspended animation; given the proper light and water, they can be re-animated, still alive.


There are a many, many kinds of bacteria in the world, filling all environmental niches; my favorite are the extreme-ophiles; bateria that live in very extreme conditions that would normally kill living things. Hydrogen vents at the bottom of the ocean, high salt areas, the artic freeze; a strain of bacteria has even evolved to survive on the crusted caps of industrial cleaning solution - eating the very stuff designed to kill them off!!!!

 

[world_events]

Thanks pal.

 

[valich]

In theory, bacteria that live in a colony can be immortal. I think there's a special term for this. Hydra (Cnidarians - little jellyfish-like critters) are also biologically immortal. Of course any species can and does experience physical destruction. But bacteria in a colony and hydra do not age. Aging is called senescence. It was reported during the nineteenth century that they pressed a hydra through a mesh and it regrouped to form itself again like new, but this has never been able to be proven in modern experiments. But hydra have been used in thousands of experimental studies because of their unique ability to regrow any part that has been cut off from just one cell - something like some salamanders can do when a limb is severed too. This is an important area of research (stem-cell research). Infants under the age of two can also regrow most of their finger if the tip is cut off, but then this ability is lost as we age. I did, however, just read an article about a guy who had the tip of his finger severed and was able to regrow it by applying pig bladder extract, so they're doing some research into this now. They use this technique in China (TCM - Traditional Chinese Medicine).