{"id":14668,"date":"2015-02-03T22:42:31","date_gmt":"2015-02-03T22:42:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2023.biowars.com\/?p=14668"},"modified":"2023-03-06T12:20:04","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T12:20:04","slug":"real-life-biological-supervillains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2023.biowars.com\/blog\/real-life-biological-supervillains\/","title":{"rendered":"Real Life Biological Supervillains"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve been reading Biowars<\/a>, you know the dangers that bacterial villains pose to the body. In our world, when the Biowarriors protecting<\/a> each of us can\u2019t defeat a threat on their own, we turn to a treatment\u00a0that transformed medicine and saved millions of lives: antibiotics.<\/p>\n

Antibiotics are designed to strike at bacteria\u2019s weaknesses. Some antibiotics attack and break down the cell walls of bacteria\u2014since human cells don\u2019t have cell walls, they escape unharmed. Other antibiotics attack the way bacteria make proteins or form DNA. Antibiotics are indiscriminate killers: they attack and destroy good bacteria as well as bad, and they do nothing against viruses.<\/p>\n

But bacteria are always mutating at random, and occasionally, one of these mutations will interfere with the way antibiotics work. That antibiotic resistance gives those bacteria an advantage and ensures they spread.<\/p>\n

Even worse, bacteria can share genes with each other in a process called conjugation. Biowars features a lot of the incredible bacterial behavior that happens every moment\u2014including bacteria physically joining and\u00a0exchanging their DNA<\/a>. The sinister ability of\u00a0Raze<\/a>\u00a0to share his DNA with other bacteria, giving them dangerous powers, is actually just biological reality\u2014although he’s a far greater threat than most of us will ever face.<\/p>\n

And antibiotic-resistant bacteria have superpowers straight off the pages of Biowars. Armored shells that antibiotics can\u2019t pierce. Enzymes that pump antibiotics out of bacterial cells. Chemicals that neutralize antibiotics. Some bacteria don\u2019t just stop\u00a0antibiotics, they eat<\/i><\/a> them.<\/p>\n

One solution is the development of new antibiotics, which bacteria haven\u2019t yet learned how to defeat. But that only buys us time. Also, developing new antibiotics is extremely expensive, and discoveries have slowed down over the past couple of decades.<\/p>\n

A world where antibiotics didn\u2019t work would make basic surgery dangerous and reintroduce the threat of diseases, like tuberculosis, that have practically been wiped out of the developed world. It\u2019s not time to despair just yet\u2014scientists are developing new weapons against bacteria that sound like science fiction. Swiss scientists have developed<\/a> nanoparticles called liposomes, which act as decoys for the toxins released by bacteria, neutralizing them until the body’s own Biowarriors can\u00a0attack and eliminate the threat.<\/p>\n

Even more incredible is scientific research<\/a> coming out of Israel, where scientists inserted a virus into antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Not only did the virus infect the bacteria, it stopped the bacteria from producing a protein that kept its cell structure intact. The bacteria then simply collapsed or fell prey to the body\u2019s defenses. Put simply, the virus made superbugs sick.<\/p>\n

These kinds of discoveries may not come in time to save Alexander Hawking in Biowars\u2014but who knows?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve been reading Biowars, you know the dangers that bacterial villains pose to the body. In our world, when the Biowarriors protecting each of us can\u2019t defeat a threat on their own, we turn to a treatment\u00a0that transformed medicine and saved millions of lives: antibiotics. Antibiotics are designed to strike at bacteria\u2019s weaknesses. Some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":14672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[78,522,61,152],"tags":[86,70,68,34],"yoast_head":"\nReal Life Biological Supervillains | Blog | BIOWARS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The biological supervillains behind the science that inspires Biowars.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/2023.biowars.com\/blog\/real-life-biological-supervillains\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Real Life Biological Supervillains | Blog | BIOWARS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The biological supervillains behind the science that inspires Biowars.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" 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