Florida State University Bacterial Pathogenicity Discussion

Help me study for my Biology class. I’m stuck and don’t understand.

Reply: Play devil’s advocate for the opposing view. Can the evidence be interpreted differently to support the other argument? 300 min words

Bacterial Pathogenicity

From the standpoint of pathogenicity islands, since there are many unknowns associated with why some bacteria of the same species cause diseases while others do not, Creation is the worldview that best explains the origin of pathogenicity. Pathogenicity islands are strips of genes within a bacteria that are considered to cause pathogenic properties of a bacteria, and are absent within the same species of bacteria that are nonpathogenic. These srtips are often very large and cannot be explained by simple mutations and adaptations. Additionally, most pathogenicity islands have DNA properties that are different from the rest of the genome and therefore have to have been placed there from somewhere outside the cells, meaning that mutation can not explain these new DNA strands. Since we can not explain the origin of these large strips of DNA changes, in order to place a causation on these pathogens, a creation viewpoint must be used to help fill in the blanks.

Modern science cannot explain how these changes occurred, so creation views these changes as a result from a single event. Only about 5-10% of currently identified bacteria are considered to be pathogenic, therefore the majority actually have a beneficial role in the environment. This helps to confirm the creation worldview that bacteria were originally created to do only good and help the environment and humans. But now a small majority of them have been changed in order to cause harm and disease. After the Fall, bacteria, along with humans, were cast out and exposed to different and new environments where they had to adapt and mutate in order to survive, thereby altering their original purpose and causing them to become cursed and potentially pathogenic.

Environmental factors play a crucial role in the mutation and changes that occur within bacteria. Bacteria adapt and change due to their environment and those impacts may subsequently cause disease within humans, but since only a small fraction of the same species actually causes pathogens, it shows that these bacteria are capable of living in these new environments without the pathogenic genome. While the evolution’s worldview can explain how the bacteria adapted to its environment and changed over time, it cannot explain why only some of the species can cause pathogens. Some examples of these bacteria with pathogenicity islands are Neisseria. Most species of Neisseria are nonpathogenic, and 93% of its genes are similar to the pathogenic strains of the bacteria. These two different strains both survive in the same environment, but only a few of them actually cause pathogens, therefore showing that these pathogenic properties are not essential for sustaining the life of the bacteria and are intended to cause disease.

References:

Gal-Mor, O., & Finlay, B.B. (2006). Pathogenicity islands: A molecular toolbox for bacterial virulence. Cellular Microbiology, 8(11), 1707-1719.

Purdom, G. (2009). The Role of Genomic Islands, Mutation, and Displacement in the Origin of Bacterial pathogenicity. Answers Research Journal 2, 133-150.

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