Re: [diybio-eu] Re: [BiologiGaragen] Bacteria? Help

[Nathan McCorkle]

Depends on the bacteria/organism... at average levels things like
probiotics in yogurt/fermentations impact our health much differently
than spoiled food.

On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 1:49 PM, Martin Malthe Borch <mmb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> We got this request but it's a bit outside our field anyone that can help
> Silke?
> (reply all to keep her in the loop)
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Silke Kristel Teglberg Jørgensen <silk...@gmail.com>
> Date: 2014-01-27
> Subject: [BiologiGaragen] Bacteria? Help
> To: biologi...@googlegroups.com
>
>
> Hi guys,
> I am a danish graduating design student from Central Saints in London, who
> are finishing my selfinitiated project on foodwaste, which I have ended up
> making a project, that can quickly be summed up to Tupperware meets US
> military technology (Sin vapor nanowires). I wish to keep people from
> wasting food by letting them moniture their own but I have no clue how many
> bacterias are healthy to eat.
> I know that one bacteria can turn into a million in 1 hour on the counter
> but how many bacterias are too many?
> Could you eat a spaghetti bolognese with 50 000 or 500 000 bacterias in
> them? I know that there is good bacteria and bad bacteria but I am mostly
> interested in campylobacter, norovirus, salmonella, Ecoli and Listeria?
>
> I hope you will help me.
> You can see a proces in the making of my project with at my blog on
> silke.designsociety.dk
>
> Best Silke
>
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--
-Nathan

[Nathan McCorkle]

http://multimedia.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/microexamfood.pdf

--
-Nathan

[Cathal Garvey]

Whoa there. A significant cause of food poisoning is B.cereus, a
relatively close cousin to B.subtilis. There are people who reckon this
similarity is the reason why B.subtilis acts as a beneficial adjuvant to
the gut lining.

B.anthracis also comes to mind, but anthracis is really just B.cereus
with more pathogenicity plasmids.

Clostridia are also gram positives, including everyone's favourite
murderous-poison-cum-cosmetic-implant-producer, C.botulinum.

I don't think any generalisations regarding pathogenicity or toxicity
can be made at the "gram positive/negative" boundary, personally.

On 27/01/14 22:48, Andreas Stuermer wrote:
> What I remember is that gram positives usually are more likely to do no
> harm when eating. Some cell wall stuff is toxic ith gram negatives.

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[Ute]

 

Dear Silke,

these are fantastic questions. Some similar questions I had when I was working at the university - Host parasite interactions.

And,  these are difficult questions:

You have to consider a lot of stuff. There are the properties of the bacteria, soooooo many different bacteria, BUT there is also the immune system  which can be also different. Some people are getting ill some not... There are different strategies of the immune system -  more tolerant or more strong! then it depends on the surrounding field - Ecoli should not be the same as Ecoli ; )

And, don´t forget the combinations of infections -  maybe some bacteria inhibits other bacteria -  interactions. And so on and so on....

I would focus on 1 bacteria stem and would do broad study with a very clear question. After your success you can extand your study. May be it is better to take bacteria where you need a low number of bacteria, so that they are not dangerous, so just count bacteria or measuring their products - no culturing. There is a study of bacteria of the sargasso sea (very old) but they analyse samplings with a very low concentration; in this paper the method is described. (Key word: Sargasso Sea, Venter, Genome Shotgun Sequencing)

"How many bacteria are healthy to eat?" Which bacteria???  Don´t take viruses like norovirus. They are too dangerous and too difficult to handle with it. And if you have no lab you can infect all surrounded people. Attention: For old people and kids it can be dangerous. E.coli is everywhere for example on cucumber.   Which products are toxic? MAy be there are E.coli which are harmless until they exceed a special concentration - they switch to pathogen bacteria. That does mean a low cencentration of bacteria is harmless for you and your friends and family.

You can do studies where you can ask patients, and may be it is possible to cooperate with an microbiology institute. They have good labs. And information.

 

Attention: Humans cannot live without bacteria. And it is not known which mixture in the intestine is the best! Also a point, do the human have a good mixture, then they are more healthy and resistant against infection diseases for example then other people which have a bad mixture with bacteria. May be this question should be checked first. The medicine would be thankful.

This is a wide topic and it is pure evolutionary biology ; ) I love it!

I wish you good luck!

Cheers, Ute

[Mike Horwath]

As people above said, this is a complex and interesting question with no single answer.

The term "infectious dose" is used for the minimum number of organisms needed to cause infection in a healthy person.  For many pathogenic GI bacteria (salmonella, enterotoxic E Coli) the infectious dose is fairly high, around 10^5 or 10^6.  For some however it's very low, Shigella for example can cause infection with only 10 bacteria.  The numbers depend partly on how well the bacteria can survive the acid in the stomach, and partly on its virulence factors once it reaches the intestine.

Food spoilage can also involve production of bacterial toxins in the food. Staph enteritis for example is a common form of "food poisoning."  The staph bacteria does not actually infect you, but the toxin it produces as it multiplies will make you sick.

Also consider:  viruses (such as norovirus) will not multiple in food, so they are not really part of food "spoilage".  You just want to avoid contaminating the food in the first place!

One more thing, from the original post:

>>I know that one bacteria can turn into a million in 1 hour on the counter

Not quite, bacteria are amazing little self-replicators but they'll still only divide a few times in an hour! 

Good luck!
Mike

[Mike Horwath]

Just wanted to correct myself---Salmonella typhi has a high infectious dose (10^5), but regular salmonella enterica is a lot lower.  Gotta watch myself! :)

[phage cocktail]

i agree with the replies here in that there is no 'clean' answer. If you are looking how to determine a safe microbial level, I'd suggest going to FDA.gov and searching for regulatory Guidance for Industry documents that cover allowable microbial content in food. Even if you don't intend to register a product under the Agency, i suspect they will outline best practices for both the quantity and quality of bacteria that would be allowable, and proper ways to measure (in microbiology, what you count depends greatly on how you measure/assay).  Its not glamorous reading, but i think it may provide you a target to move towards. 

[Martin Malthe Borch]

Answer from Silke

2014-01-29 Silke Kristel Teglberg Jørgensen <silk...@gmail.com>

Hi Guys,

Thank you so much for taking your time in writing your responses. I truly appreciate it. I did learn a lot about bacteria which indeed was not to be found in my limited internet search. In a way it helped to know that there isn't just one single answer. I was frantically looking for that one formula I could use in my project. However the complexity of the issue simply makes it a lot more interesting. 

If any of you might be interested in a project that interlink design, technology and biology, I will be blogging a bit more about my project on silke.designsociety.dk

Best Regards 

Silke Joergensen

Den mandag den 27. januar 2014 15.56.51 UTC skrev Silke Kristel Teglberg Jørgensen:

Hi guys,
I am a danish graduating design student from Central Saints in London, who are finishing my selfinitiated project on foodwaste, which I have ended up making a project, that can quickly be summed up to Tupperware meets US military technology (Sin vapor nanowires). I wish to keep people from wasting food by letting them moniture their own but I have no clue how many bacterias are healthy to eat.
I know that one bacteria can turn into a million in 1 hour on the counter but how many bacterias are too many?
 Could you eat a spaghetti bolognese with 50 000 or 500 000 bacterias in them? I know that there is good bacteria and bad bacteria but I am mostly interested in campylobacter, norovirus, salmonella, Ecoli and Listeria?

I hope you will help me.
You can see a proces in the making of my project with at my blog on
silke.designsociety.dk

Best Silke

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