E.coli: Greetings dear Bacilli, Cocci, Spirochaetes, Mycoplasms and offspring. I, Escherichia coli K-12 of family Enterobacteriaceae, welcome you to the General Bacterial Gathering. It is my privilege as the spokes-microbe to throw some light …
**Photobacterium illuminate the stage – metabolism at its brightest**
…on the latest fissions, fusions and multiplications of plans made by us in our last bacterial annum. Before I start off with the regular proceedings, I would like everyone to stand on their flagellas, those atrichous on their fimbriae or pili to take a moment to stand in memory of those who denature their plasmids in the hellish autoclave just to maintain our great reputation of proper contamination. Remember, true martyrs only lyse physically; but they are forever alive in our genomes!
MRSA: DOWN WITH RESTRICTION DIGESTIONS!!!!
PROMOTE BETA-LACTAMASE SECRETIONS!!
Mr. Salmonella :
Achooooooooooooo !!!!
E.coli: Mr. Typhi, please exocytose that recombinant Influenza receptor before the meeting in the human world. According to the rules, sneezing, puking or conjugating here will not be tolerated! Anyway, I would like to invite Monsieur Vibrio cholerae to say a few words.
MRSA: M! METH R! RES! S! STAPH! A! AUREUS!..
MRSA!!! MRSA!!!!! MRSA!!!!!
Vibrio:
Merci Monsieur E.Coli! Bon jour! Vee, ze bactereaial generha, r eh uge clan veet many of uz replicating in uman intesteens. Vee r ze one whoo geef stoopid umans aver soofiseecatd diseeses and make dem leak zeir debrhi frhom both ends, but Mon du! vee r beeing man-andled!! Ze only theengs dat sum of uz r dooing now r running fhamilee-planning on agaar platez, excreeting ze enzymes, beeing cukked in ze ovens to become ze vaccines!
Laast but not ze least, seeting in ze UV chaember running ze operons, feed on ze lactose sans saveur and surhvyv on toxic za fungal wastez. Sum of ouverh own kingdom iz secreeting anteebioteecs!! Quelle honte!!
MRSA: DOWN WITH LACTOSE OPERONS!
B. subtilis:
Now, now, deary, let’s not point flagelle at anybody. We all do our jobs…In my times there was full ‘freedom of secretion’ in our constitution. I will make what I like! Erwinia sweetheart…you feeling ok?…..
Lady Erwinia collapses and lands slime-layer first onto the mud. The Clostridium paramedics run to the rescue. The member is recognized as Lady Erwinia Amylovora who once belonged to same family as her cousin E.Coli but betrayed her family by shifting to plants from the natural habitat of animal intestines. She used to survive on simple requirements but things were getting so complex nowadays that she couldn’t get proper intake daily for herself and her trailing species. CSC gives her a glucose shot.
[mild tremors felt across the meeting venue]
E. coli :
Oh dear…tremors are not a good sign. I am sorry as to what happened to my cousin Erwinia. By seeing her condition we can clearly say that we are running short of nutrients. We need to act fast! Members, we have decided to go ahead with ‘Project Sweet Revolution’. We will immediately start synthesizing more glucose and conserve it for our every proliferating offspring!! Our phototrophic community has agreed to produce the required amounts in return of necessary resources and full time protection. Mr.Azotobacter, Mr.Rhizobium and members of CSC have volunteered to help the autotrophic minority to boost their energy-less electrons.
MRSA: MOVE OUT OF PLATES AND AGAR JUNK,
SWITCH TO INTESTINES OF SKUNK!
Mr. Proteus rudely lets out a gush of suffocating ammonia gas. Everyone in the vicinity shuts up their mesosomes.
Madame Klebsiella:
I would be truly grateful if the spokes-microbe could kindly solve property and nutrient rights between all of us enterobacterea within the intestines. There is freedom of secretion but no liberty of gas production! We need a motion on this.
MRSA: IF WE DON’T GET NO FOOD.
YOU DON’T GET NO PERFUME!
E.coli:
Madame Klebsiella it is all about proper motions, isn’t it? Unfortunately there is no precedent about the dispersion of obnoxious gases. We shall deal with the bio-geo-chemical cycling issues in the near future!
Let’s concentrate on our latest human problems. We are now very vulnerable to their loops. The other day Mrs. Nessiera was forced to crack open her lipopolysaccharide coat to show her peptidoglycan content. But do not worry. Dr. Thermus‘s and Dr. Pyrolobus‘s lab has had a major breakthrough to counteract this embarrassment. Their research was focused on evolving a new pseudomurein layer with tighter isoprene chains and lower lipids. We are excited to reveal that their latest experiments can guarantee us coats which can resist an astounding 115°C.
[**Applause**]
Mrs. Rickettsia gives Rickettsia Jr. a tolerably warm hug. The family have huge hopes from junior who shows great potential to become an official and responsible human pathogen.
Mr. Mycobacterium :
We are having terrible experience infecting humans nowadays. Just the other day, my poor twins had innocently infected a human while playing in the backyard. They had a narrow escape from a terrible aniline dye and escaped. Their brand new mycolic-acid-covering was permanently dyed with the stain. Just imagine the torment the two are going through at this young age!
MRSA : BETTER DEAD THAN STAINED,
BETTER SOGGY THAN DRAINED!!
[Moderate tremors rock the meeting venue…..]
E.coli :
Oh dear its getting close. We are all glad that your kin eluded the evil human eye! For all those interested, Mrs. Diphtheriae, Mr.Tetani and Mrs. Yersinia will be giving micro-public demonstrations about the increasing audacity of humans who try to paint us red! I have requested our Pseudomonas Culture Foundation labs to work on new genes that would help us avoid the binding to dyes and provide more privacy from the human blood T-cells, B-cells and immunoglobulins. Signora Shigella, you wish to speak?
MRSA: FOR BOWELS WE STRIVE…
FOR BINARY FISSIONS WE THRIVE!!
Signora Shigella:
Si, grazie mille! Io sono Shigella. Sorry for my English! I think we need to be friendly with virooses. T-even coliphages ave sent spies with Dee-En-Aa to find us. We should be smart. We should not fall for tricks. We don’t be stupid. I virooses sono belle. If you date, the phages penetrate and control tutii genomi, stronza! Be vhery carefool of beeutee and sexy viroos belle! La famiglia Viroosa is stronger than La Camorra, La Mafia! They scare those umans. To win, we should not loss our ATPs and nucleotides in Leeteec and Leesogenic battglia! Forza Monera!!!
MRSA : DOWN WITH VIRALISM………FREEDOM TO SLIME-ISM
[Very strong tremors unbalance the meeting participants]
E.coli :
Not too far now I guess. I hear you signora! We have called upon a capable toxin releasing team from various families like the great biopesticide Dr. B. thuringiensis and Dr. C. botulinum to try and evolve a new antiviral machinery. Till now they have not been very successful. Microbes of the community, lend me your ribosomes (and translate accordingly). We placed our pili in this world long before those humans! We were told by nature to transcribe new proteins and create whom we know today as the humans. It took us great time to sculpture these evolutionary descendents who have now started using us for their benefits! They are abusing and murdering countless of our numbers every second! My nucleosome swells with grief when I see the debris of our fellow microbes in the enzyme cemetery acting as the sites for endonuclease, exonuclease and protease activity. May I request Streptococcus and Pseudomonas rough families to kindly undergo transformation if you find any useful genome in the cemetery.
MRSA : ALL HAIL RECYCLED MARTYRS!!
A huge group is found rushing towards the debris, competing for the spoils of the war. Inspector Lactobacillus denies them exit fas the debri genomes may have transduced viral contamination. A terrible Central Dogma hazard!!
E.coli. :
Friends, family and offspring…lend me your flagella, cilia and ear-glycans. We help the humans to digest their food and what do we get in return? A red hot sterilized nichrome loop burning our precious genes to carbon dioxide or perhaps a one way ticket to UV chamber where we are brutally apprehended by hard wavelengths, forced to gobble up tasteless lactose! World was ours and now our own evolved multicellular brats are killing and rampaging all our resources. They forget that everything had started with us and everything ends with us!
E.coli :
It is now time to put our nuclei together and take a strong decision. We cannot go against nature’s wishes. Suffering members of Kingdom Monera, let’s unite and pass the ultimate resolution. We vow to be united in the decision taken by the majority of flagellas raised.
MRSA: DOWN WITH……
E.coil :
SHUT UP MRSA!!!!! HERE IT IS!!! This is our chance to seek vengeance! To give back as much pain as we have suffered. The humans will finally feel the wrath of the Monera. GET TO WORK EVERYONE!!!!!
Very strong quakes rip apart the venue. All enterobacters take position, ready for action. Commensals flee south while MRSA disperses into capillaries.
THE PANIPURI HAS FINALLY REACHED THE SMALL INTESTINES. IT’S TIME TO BREAKDOWN SOME GOLGAPPA, WELCOME NEW MEMBERS AND MAKE SOME GAS.
[Evil Laugh and Painful Indigestion]
THE END
About the author: Sourav Banerjee has completed his PhD from MRC Protein Phosphorylation unit, Dundee, UK and is currently working as a postdoctoral associate at UC San Diego, USA. His interests include traveling, eating and numismatics.
About the illustrator: Vibhav Nadkarni completed his post-graduation in Biosciences from University of Auckland. He is currently considering a career move to the field of Bioimaging. He has previously worked with Regenerative Medical Services and SRL Ranbaxy. He is constantly exploring ways to incorporate creativity into life sciences. In his spare time, he works on building his online travel venture. His interests include sketching/painting and traveling.
Edited and Fake accented by: Shraddha Lad has recently finished her PhD in Epigenetics and Imprinting as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Early Stage Researcher from Naples, Italy. She is currently at crossroads about her future career (Academia versus Industry) and is using the publication of her manuscript as an excuse to delay making that decision (jk!). In her free time she enjoys reading, tasting different cuisines, gaming and music.
This work by ClubSciWri is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
