Superheroes of the microbe world series #1: The Superman of bacteria.

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If you shrink Superman but retain his super strength, it would be this bacteria.

Hello fellow steemians,

Welcome to my first entry of the Superheroes of the microbe world series where we take a look at some of the most ridiculously powerful bacteria in existence today, with superpowers that sounds like something straight out of a DC or Marvel comics.

Now, for most of you who have been following me and my previous posts, topics on superpower is nothing new and as you will see, it will be a recurring theme for the next few days to come as we finish this 5-part series.

WHAT??? YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT MY OTHER AWESOME SUPERHEROES POSTS?? WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE??

If you didn’t know already, don’t worry about it, I’ll post the link to my previous superheroes posts(which took me days to finish) for you to read and learn something new, at the end of this entry.

With that said, let’s dive right into our first episode which will cover on The Superman of bacteria

Introducing, the notorious Neisseria gonorrhoea!

Yes, it’s exactly what you’re thinking of. Now, Superman doesn’t go around giving people STDs (At least not that we know of) but the reason why Neisseria gonorrhoea is called the Superman of bacteria is because of its outrageous super strength.

In fact, according to the 2008 study published in the PLOS Biology journal, they are, gram-for-gram, THE STRONGEST ORGANISM ON EARTH

Yes, the strongest, on Earth. Let that sink in for a moment.

On second thought, don’t let N. gonorrhoea sink in, you may need to see a doctor.

To understand why the bold claim was made, we must understand how the bacteria moves around. The bacteria uses its pili – a cable-like appendages, to crawl across surfaces to attach to and infect other cells. To study how these infection takes hold, scientists placed individual N. gonorrhoea microbes in an array of stretchy gel pillars.

When a bacterium grabbed hold of these tiny pillars with its pili, the pillar would bend and the extent of that bend can be measured and be calculated to represent the amount of force being exerted.

THE RESULT

They aren't sure why but about 1 in 100 times, what started off as a standard grab would keep going and get Stronger and STRONGER. Using an Electron Microscope, the bacteria was confirmed to be bundling additional pili together to exert more and more force and this went on for hours and ended up pulling 10 TIMES harder than they started.

They found that a single N. gonorrhoea bacterium was able to exert a force of up to one billionth of a newton force. That may not sound a lot but you have to remember, these are bacteria and when taking into account of its size, that’s equivalent to pulling 100 000 TIMES ITS BODY WEIGHT making this the strongest biological force to date

That’s like a 70kg man, pulling 7 mid-size ships at once!

There you go, beyond being infamous for causing STDs, N. gonorrhoea’s ridiculous strength deserves some credit as well.

If you find this post informative and entertaining, do leave a vote.

Thank you for reading.

References:

1. Cooperative Retraction of Bundled Type IV Pili Enables Nanonewton Force Generation
2. Sexually transmitted bug is the strongest organism

Other superheroes-related posts:

1. Why salt is the superhero of the food world
2. The Sentry: The most RIDICULOUSLY POWERFUL Marvel Superhero you’ve never heard of!