So did you manage to find them all? Here are the answers for all of you still struggling to find those last few pesky bacterial names! Hope you all had a good Christmas and a bit of a break from work (and Covid). 

Best wishes for the New Year!

​Nuts & Bolts will be back week of the 10th January... see you then...

For Christmas this year we've given you a fiendishly hard wordsearch. Hidden within these letters are the names of 20 bacterial species (NO, Covid-19 is NOT in this wordsearch) - can you find them all? If you can't do it, ask a colleague or your team, someone must be able to find them all...

Merry Christmas!

Above is the wordsearch without the word list if you are really wanting to make it tricky, otherwise the list is attached to the wordsearch below... answers after Christmas...

P.S. Please don't phone your oncall Microbiologist for the answers, they don't have them either! You'll just have to be patient :-)

“May I discuss a patient with you please?” asked the ward Doctor.
 
“You want to discuss a patient? Okay, but this telephone line is terrible” replied the Microbiologist, wondering whether the “new” telephone system in the hospital was really an “improvement”.
 
“Sorry, it’s a bit difficult to hear you” said the ward Doctor, “I wanted to discuss a patient with enlarged glands in the neck.”
 
“What?!” exclaimed the Microbiologist, “you think your patient has glanders! Why do you think they have glanders?”
 
“Yes, they have large glands …in their neck.”
 
“Glanders is extremely rare, and very severe, have you started antibiotics?”
 
“Yes, we want to start antibiotics.”
 
The telephone line was still terrible, and the Microbiologist was starting to get really worried. He looked at the number listed on the phone recognising it as the Acute Medical Unit where patients were admitted.
 
“I’m coming to you, wait for me there” said the Microbiologist putting down the phone.
 
“Blooming Microbiologist,” muttered the ward Doctor, “he just hung up on me!”
 
What is glanders?
Glanders is principally an infection of “solipeds” …that’s horses, donkeys and mules to you and me. It is caused by the bacterium Burkholderia mallei, a small, Gram-negative, oxidase positive, bacillus, that only replicates inside its living host being unable to survive in the environment. B. mallei is not to be confused with a similar bacterium I blogged about way, way, back in 2017 called Burkholderia pseudomallei which causes a condition called melliodosis and which is able to survive in the environment!

The scientist shuffled slowly into the dimly lit lab, his yellowing lab coat flapping against his legs as he moved between benches scattered with forgotten specimens and broken bits of equipment.
 
“I wonder what choice morsels you have for me today” he chattered to no one in particular.

Viruses are boring! I mean, what’s the point to viruses? All they do is make us sick, right? You just have to look at the past year to know that, and you can’t turn on the TV without seeing some product that “kills all known germs… including the coronavirus… dead!” Shouldn’t we be trying to eliminate all viruses, wouldn’t the World be better if there were no viruses?
 
But some say not all viruses are bad for us!? More importantly, some say there would be no humans if there were no viruses!! How stupid is that?!
 
Well to look at this question, let’s first consider what we are, mammals.

One thing lockdown has taught me is that being outdoors in whatever weather the UK can throw at me is something to be embraced as much as possible. I’ve been fortunate. By being a healthcare worker, I’ve been able to leave the house and get a change of scenery even if it’s just a hospital building. On top of that the ECIC and I have a nice garden we can use at home to relax in the fresh air (sometimes more fresh than is comfortable!).
 
The ECIC and I are now even more lucky. We have recently been able to buy a bit of land to turn into our own little growing space for fruit and vegetables… okay, this may not be your idea of fun, but we like it…. Whilst we’re busy digging out the brambles and nettles we have been chewing over ideas about how to look after our crops, and one of our problems to solve is water.
 
The land we have has no mains water. We can collect a lot of water from the roof of our shed and greenhouses (planning permission pending!), but if we need more then we’ll have to look somewhere else. One option is the small stream nearby, so we wandered over to have a look at what it’s like… and it’s ORANGE!

Back in the blog in August called “My pandemic is worse than your pandemic” I mentioned I might do a future blog on the ancient disease called Cocoliztli, which I had never heard of before… well for once I’ve remembered I said I would do a particular topic and here it is!
 
So I’ve delve into my historical medical books (and Google!) to look further into the unknown pandemic of Cocoliztli.
 
It is well known that imported infections from Europe with the Spanish Conquistadors caused many deaths; Smallpox for example was imported in about 1520 and killed about 8 million people. In fact during the 16th Century about 90% of the native population of Mexico was wiped out by disease. But as if Smallpox wasn’t enough, this was followed in 1545 by the first Cocoliztli epidemic which killed a further 15 million people. Local people called this disease Cocoliztli or “pest” and as pandemics go this one seems pretty bad! A further Cocoliztli epidemic in 1576 killed another 50% of the population, so by this time more than 90% of the natives had been killed in just over 50 years!

Did you know that guinea pigs cough? I didn’t… but then I’ve never had a pet guinea pig… In fact I’ve discovered that all mammals cough, who knew?! Guinea pigs apparently have a cough pathway (from something stimulating a cough through neural networks and chemical signals to the actual cough) that is the same as humans so they are a great animal model for studying coughs in humans…??

One of life’s unsolved mysteries is “how did life on Earth begin?” Did it start here spontaneously as “God created us” or did Darwin get it right with his “evolution theory”? And are we alone in our universe? Let’s skip the God versus Darwin bit and jump straight to the question “did life arrive from outer space” and “can life survive in space?”
 
When times get “trying” here on planet Earth ECIC wishes she was on Pluto with her cats, her rules and no people! But she may not be alone!! The newest research suggests that bacteria can survive in the hostile environment of space; maybe the dream of living on Pluto with remote “homeworking” for a Consultant Microbiologist might be a reality (our hospital computer system is called Enterprise after all!)
 
No, No, No, stick with me!!! It’s true, those pesky microorganisms have been found to survive on the outside of the ISS (International Space Station). There’s even a named theory… the theory that living organisms can survive and transfer through space is known as “panspermia”. 

Editor Chief in Charge and I have spent the weekend trying to work out what we’re going to do if/when we can’t go on holiday later this year because of a certain unmentionable pesky virus. The basic answer is that we might not be going somewhere exotic! But why might not being able to go on holiday somewhere exotic be a good idea?!?
 
I know… pufferfish!
 
Pufferfish are tropical fish found especially in Asia. They are called pufferfish because they have a rather unusual defence strategy; they can fill their stomachs with water so that they balloon up into a ball shooting numerous spiky spines outwards. Any predator stupid enough to try and eat a pufferfish gets a mouth or stomach full of spines and probably chokes… nasty. Bloat, from the Disney film “Finding Nemo” was a pufferfish; he blows up like a beach ball every time something startles him… he’s my favourite character and he’s hilarious!