When you hear the word “bacteria” what do you think of? If you’re like most people, you probably think of things that can make you sick. Although some bacteria do make us sick, this is not true for all of them. In fact, as we’ll see a little later, some bacteria are very helpful.


Did you know that bacteria can have a virus? It’s true! But first, you might be wondering: what’s the difference between viruses and bacteria?


Bacteria grows and reproduces on its own, while viruses cannot exist or reproduce without being in a living cell of a plant, animal, or even bacteria. Size-wise, bacteria are enormous.


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5 Responses to “Can Bacteria Get Sick?”

  1. paulnemelita says:

    There is a typo in “One simple step everyone can take to reduce these kinds problems is washing your hands before cooking or eating.”. It should be “to reduce these kinds of problems” instead of “to reduce these kinds problems”.

  2. Julie Treat says:

    cool awesome graet!

  3. Bonnie Telesmanich says:

    In some other countries bacteriophages are already used as treatment for bacterial infections. Some scientists believe that they may be one possible solution to antibiotic resistant bacteria. Fascinating!

  4. Lisa Dage says:

    ick!

  5. Kaelen Davis says:

    That’s amazing! I was thinking, if you can genetically engineer the viruses to avoid cells naturally found in the body and attack foreign bacteria, and you can take this in the form of a pill, then that would help your immune system. Plus, whenever it attacks another cell, it makes more of itself. The only problem would be the wouldn’t last too long since it has no way to reproduce, so you’d constantly have to take the pill. This might work, but it would be very hard and expensive. But I did read somewhere that scientist were genetically engineering a type of virus called the tobacco mosaic virus to be used in lithium batteries, so at least that’s possible.