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bacteria
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
bacteria
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
aerobic
▪ A specimen of the fluid was used for bacteriological studies including microscopy and culture on plates for aerobic and anaerobic bacteria.
▪ Aside from buffering your water, it offers good external and internal surfaces for aerobic and anaerobic bacteria.
anaerobic
▪ This leads to dead spots, a breeding ground for anaerobic bacteria.
▪ Beneficial anaerobic filter bacteria require oxygen to oxidise nitrites to safer nitrates.
▪ Under these conditions there is a proliferation of anaerobic bacteria which can lead to the release of harmful by-products, such as methane.
▪ A specimen of the fluid was used for bacteriological studies including microscopy and culture on plates for aerobic and anaerobic bacteria.
▪ Aside from buffering your water, it offers good external and internal surfaces for aerobic and anaerobic bacteria.
▪ On the farm, slurry from solid and urine residues is digested by anaerobic bacteria in closed chambers.
certain
▪ As a result of the increasing acidity, certain acidophilic soil bacteria are then released, which promote further acidification.
▪ Under these conditions, certain species of bacteria break down the waste to form methane gas.
harmful
▪ Other plants sown with the reeds absorb heavy metals and harmful bacteria.
▪ Thorough cooking kills harmful bacteria, so be sure ground meat and poultry are cooked to the well-done stage.
▪ Ridding his stables of a harmful bacteria cocktail has been a long and costly process for Berwickshire trainer James Adam.
▪ More than a decade ago the National Academy of Sciences recommended that new technology be used to target harmful bacteria.
▪ Two separate surveys found that many prepacked sandwiches were being stored at dangerously high temperatures, causing the spread of harmful bacteria.
▪ Other chips may detect the presence of moulds or harmful bacteria.
intestinal
▪ Data obtained from the test reflect the magnitude of intraperitoneal contamination by intestinal bacteria.
▪ From the results obtained PABA-UDCA disulphate was considered a good material to detect intestinal bacteria.
methanogenic
▪ Quantitative measurements show that in methanogenic subjects the majority of gaseous hydrogen produced from fermentation is consumed by methanogenic bacteria.
▪ Invitro, sulphate reducing bacteria compete with methanogenic bacteria for hydrogen when sulphate is present.
▪ Breath methane was measured and viable counts and metabolic activities of methanogenic bacteria and sulphate reducing bacteria determined in faeces.
▪ In marine sediments and faeces, sulphate reducing bacteria outcompete methanogenic bacteria because of their higher affinity for such substrates.
▪ Between 30 and 50% of people in western countries harbour methanogenic bacteria in their colons.
▪ Dietary sulphate may allow growth of sulphate reducing bacteria which inhibit the growth of methanogenic bacteria.
▪ Fermentation experiments in our laboratory have shown that colonic sulphate reducing bacteria outcompete methanogenic bacteria for H 2.
▪ These results further indicate that the formation of the siderite concretions is not associated with the activity of methanogenic bacteria.
other
▪ Once the fish is affected, other pathogens, bacteria as well as protozoal parasites and fungi, will compound the overall situation.
▪ Nevertheless in the early days many of the other forms of bacteria died off in vast numbers.
▪ The new bacterial forms were versatile and energetic, and could engulf other bacteria.
▪ There are several other bacteria similar to the gonococcus, which belong to the same family, the Neisseriae.
▪ The genus was sufficiently unlike other bacteria to arouse curiosity.
■ NOUN
filter
▪ Beneficial anaerobic filter bacteria require oxygen to oxidise nitrites to safer nitrates.
▪ Most proprietary medications are designed not to kill filter bacteria.
▪ Does it set back the filter bacteria, denied of the first stage of the nitrogen equation?
▪ Others claim to aid the filter process by breaking down the detritus helping filter bacteria to get to work.
▪ F Filter bacteria: Almost every natural substance can be broken down by bacteria. and fish wastes are no exception.
■ VERB
cause
▪ A postmortem showed the cause of her death to be pneumonia caused by the Legionella bacteria.
▪ It is caused by bacteria or parasites or poor water quality and the only sure treatment is antibiotics, preferably by injection.
▪ Although its origin is not known, it is caused by skin bacteria acting on our body chemistry.
▪ A pathologist told the inquest Mrs Ormerod died from pneumonia caused by the legionella bacteria.
▪ Over recent years considerable concern has been expressed over the introduction of new diseases caused by bacteria and viruses in particular.
▪ Tetanus is caused by bacteria which are present in soil.
▪ Meningitis can be caused by both bacteria and viruses.
▪ Most reported incidents of food poisoning are caused by bacteria, parasites or viruses found in sewage.
contain
▪ Some toothpastes are specially made to help keep your gums healthy, as they contain ingredients which fight bacteria.
▪ Because mucous can contain viruses and bacteria, it can spread infections to others.
▪ By its very nature, raw meat will contain some bacteria.
▪ This drip could contain bacteria and contaminate other food.
▪ They discovered almost 1,000 chains, suggesting that the entire meteorite contained millions of bacteria, says Friedmann.
▪ The roots of the reeds contain naturally occurring bacteria which transform toxic elements contained in factory effluent, into benign substances.
destroy
▪ Government scientists believe the action of sea water will destroy the bacteria.
▪ If not destroyed, the bacteria can spread, especially to the membranes around the brain.
▪ Irradiation would make things worse by destroying the warning spoilage bacteria and leaving pathogens untouched.
▪ Heat destroys bacteria faster in a wet environment.
kill
▪ Raw garlic is said to be preferable to kill bacteria and boost immune functioning.
▪ Cold temperatures do not kill bacteria, they just put them on hold.
▪ The chemicals break down the faeces and obviously kill any bacteria present.
▪ Thorough cooking kills harmful bacteria, so be sure ground meat and poultry are cooked to the well-done stage.
▪ Most proprietary medications are designed not to kill filter bacteria.
▪ Antibiotics are chemicals produced naturally by fungi to kill their rivals: bacteria.
▪ Antibiotics will. of course, kill all bacteria, including beneficial kinds in the filter, whether this is undergravel or not.
▪ Cooking wild rabbits kills these bacteria.
live
▪ A layer of photosynthetic bacteria lives permanently on the boundary between brackish and highly saline water.
▪ But the bacteria does not live on the roots, and is not effective in preventing damage.
▪ Detailed study produced some chemical evidence that bacteria had once lived within the meteorite.
▪ Some bacteria that live in mud on Earth use chains of magnetite as tiny compasses to determine which way is up.
▪ Remember you are putting organic matter into your tank, but you will not be upsetting the bacteria living in your filter.
▪ Soil bacteria and fungi live by digesting and recycling dead plant material such as leaves and seed cases.
produce
▪ These peptides are produced by bacteria normally found in the human bowel and in patients with ulcerative colitis.
▪ Cultured buttes-milk is pasteurized skim milk or low-fat milk that has been soured by lactic acid producing bacteria or other similar culture.
▪ However, a variety of urease producing bacteria are present in the mouth and swallowed in the saliva.
▪ These research activities have led to the initial isolation of many of the now known species of methane producing bacteria.
▪ Yeang also claimed he has produced antibodies against bacteria in the sap.
reduce
▪ Invitro, sulphate reducing bacteria compete with methanogenic bacteria for hydrogen when sulphate is present.
▪ Breath methane was measured and viable counts and metabolic activities of methanogenic bacteria and sulphate reducing bacteria determined in faeces.
▪ In marine sediments and faeces, sulphate reducing bacteria outcompete methanogenic bacteria because of their higher affinity for such substrates.
▪ We conclude that methanogenesis is regulated by dietary sulphate if sulphate reducing bacteria are present.
▪ Dietary sulphate may allow growth of sulphate reducing bacteria which inhibit the growth of methanogenic bacteria.
▪ Sulphate feeding allows growth of sulphate reducing bacteria which then may inhibit methanogenic bacterial by substrate competition.
▪ An important alternative is the reduction of sulphate by sulphate reducing bacteria.
▪ When sulphate availability is increased sulphate reducing bacteria proliferate and eventually may outcompete methanogens when the sulphate supply is sufficient.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Also, the test may be useful for monitoring the effects of antibiotics on the gastrointestinal bacteria.
▪ Botulism toxin from bacteria prevents the release of acetylcholine and is the most poisonous substance known.
▪ He looked like he had a corner on the local bacteria market.
▪ Quantitative measurements show that in methanogenic subjects the majority of gaseous hydrogen produced from fermentation is consumed by methanogenic bacteria.
▪ The incubation period almost certainly varies with the number of bacteria originally passed on.
▪ The mouth and digestive system are remarkably well defended against bacteria and other disease-causing, agents.
▪ The results that we saw did not show the presence of any forms of bacteria.
▪ There may be more bacteria in and on you as you read this than there are human beings in the whole world.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Bacteria

Bacteria \Bac*te"ri*a\, n. pl. See Bacterium.

Bacteria

Bacterium \Bac*te"ri*um\ (b[a^]k*t[=e]"r[i^]*[u^]m), n.; pl. Bacteria (b[a^]k*t[=e]"r[i^]*[.a]). [NL., fr. Gr. bakth`rion, ba`ktron, a staff: cf. F. bact['e]rie.] (Biol.) A microscopic single-celled organism having no distinguishable nucleus, belonging to the kingdom Monera. Bacteria have varying shapes, usually taking the form of a jointed rodlike filament, or a small sphere, but also in certain cases having a branched form. Bacteria are destitute of chlorophyll, but in those members of the phylum Cyanophyta (the blue-green algae) other light-absorbing pigments are present. They are the smallest of microscopic organisms which have their own metabolic processes carried on within cell membranes, viruses being smaller but not capable of living freely. The bacteria are very widely diffused in nature, and multiply with marvelous rapidity, both by fission and by spores. Bacteria may require oxygen for their energy-producing metabolism, and these are called aerobes; or may multiply in the absence of oxygen, these forms being anaerobes. Certain species are active agents in fermentation, while others appear to be the cause of certain infectious diseases. The branch of science with studies bacteria is bacteriology, being a division of microbiology. See Bacillus.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
bacteria

1847, plural of Modern Latin bacterium, from Greek bakterion "small staff," diminutive of baktron "stick, rod," from PIE *bak- "staff used for support" (also source of Latin baculum "rod, walking stick"). So called because the first ones observed were rod-shaped. Introduced as a scientific word 1838 by German naturalist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (1795-1876).

Wiktionary
bacteria

Etymology 1 n. 1 (plural of bacterium English)Category:English plurals 2 (context US English) A type, species, or strain of bacterium Etymology 2

n. (context dated medicine English) An oval bacterium, as distinguished from a spherical coccus or rod-shaped bacillus

WordNet
bacteria

n. (microbiology) single-celled or noncellular spherical or spiral or rod-shaped organisms lacking chlorophyll that reproduce by fission; important as pathogens and for biochemical properties; taxonomy is difficult; often considered plants [syn: bacterium]

Wikipedia
Bacteria (disambiguation)

The bacteria are a major group of prokaryotic living organisms.

Bacteria may also refer to:

  • Bacteria (malware) or Rabbit Programs, a type of malicious software
  • Bacteria, a fictional country in The Great Dictator
  • Bacteria, the wife of Unhygienix in the Asterix comics
  • Bacteriidae, a family of South American stick insects
Bacteria

Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a number of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals. Bacteria were among the first life forms to appear on Earth, and are present in most of its habitats. Bacteria inhabit soil, water, acidic hot springs, radioactive waste, and the deep portions of Earth's crust. Bacteria also live in symbiotic and parasitic relationships with plants and animals.

There are typically 40 million bacterial cells in a gram of soil and a million bacterial cells in a millilitre of fresh water. There are approximately 5×10 bacteria on Earth, forming a biomass which exceeds that of all plants and animals. Bacteria are vital in recycling nutrients, with many of the stages in nutrient cycles dependent on these organisms, such as the fixation of nitrogen from the atmosphere and putrefaction. In the biological communities surrounding hydrothermal vents and cold seeps, bacteria provide the nutrients needed to sustain life by converting dissolved compounds, such as hydrogen sulphide and methane, to energy. On 17 March 2013, researchers reported data that suggested bacterial life forms thrive in the Mariana Trench, which with a depth of up to 11 kilometres is the deepest part of the Earth's oceans. Other researchers reported related studies that microbes thrive inside rocks up to 580 metres below the sea floor under 2.6 kilometres of ocean off the coast of the northwestern United States. According to one of the researchers, "You can find microbes everywhere — they're extremely adaptable to conditions, and survive wherever they are."

Most bacteria have not been characterized, and only about half of the bacterial phyla have species that can be grown in the laboratory. The study of bacteria is known as bacteriology, a branch of microbiology.

There are approximately ten times as many bacterial cells in the human flora as there are human cells in the body, with the largest number of the human flora being in the gut flora, and a large number on the skin. The vast majority of the bacteria in the body are rendered harmless by the protective effects of the immune system, and some are beneficial. However, several species of bacteria are pathogenic and cause infectious diseases, including cholera, syphilis, anthrax, leprosy, and bubonic plague. The most common fatal bacterial diseases are respiratory infections, with tuberculosis alone killing about 2 million people per year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. In developed countries, antibiotics are used to treat bacterial infections and are also used in farming, making antibiotic resistance a growing problem. In industry, bacteria are important in sewage treatment and the breakdown of oil spills, the production of cheese and yogurt through fermentation, and the recovery of gold, palladium, copper and other metals in the mining sector, as well as in biotechnology, and the manufacture of antibiotics and other chemicals.

Once regarded as plants constituting the class Schizomycetes, bacteria are now classified as prokaryotes. Unlike cells of animals and other eukaryotes, bacterial cells do not contain a nucleus and rarely harbour membrane-bound organelles. Although the term bacteria traditionally included all prokaryotes, the scientific classification changed after the discovery in the 1990s that prokaryotes consist of two very different groups of organisms that evolved from an ancient common ancestor. These evolutionary domains are called Bacteria and Archaea.

Usage examples of "bacteria".

In appearance they are not very different from conventional bacteria, but at high magnification, or rather, at a relatively high magnification, the highest magnification a conventional school microscope is capable of, if you look very carefully you could see some particles inside that have regular geometric shapes.

Some of the bacteria were marked with a felt pen circles, and inside those one could indeed see some rectangles and geometrically perfect spheres that were interconnected by some strings and pipes.

Although individual bacteria also use omnidirectional radiation to communicate with their closest neighbors at the distances of up to a few millimeters, the strength of such signal is very low and it cannot be used for communications at a long range of, say, tens of meters.

For long-range communications, groups of neighboring bacteria cooperate with each other to create, for the time of a long-range communications session, a sort of phased antenna array with a pencil-beam radiation pattern.

Those would pass on their message to other bacteria living further down along the water-pipe, those other ones would pass the message to still other ones, and so on, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

And the ocean is teeming with these bacteria, so from there on the message would be traveling very fast.

And their memories do hold something, and it seems that a considerable portion of those memories differ from one bacteria to another.

The bacteria that have tapped into your nerve fiber in the same way as an eavesdropping device might tap into a phone line, intercept these pulses, convert them into infrared radiation that is transmitted to another group of bacteria located a few dozen feet from you, those other bacteria pass it on to yet another group, and so on.

Since these bacteria already live inside everyone on Earth anyway, we could safely assume that they also live inside those who might be eavesdropping on us in Moscow.

We could also assume that one of the cyborg-bacteria has hooked up to his auditory nerve in the same way as it did to yours, the only difference being that your bacteria is recording electrical pulses coming from your ear, while his bacteria is reproducing these pulses, inducing them in his auditory nerve.

Some of them even go as far as to say that that the only thing needed for the further work on the bacteria hybrid was the bacteria itself, since it already had in itself all the tools required for any further modifications or upgrades, and that means that all the further development effort could be conducted at home.

Inside me, just as inside you and all the other people on Earth, there now live the same cyborg-bacteria, and these particular bacteria inside your body provide an interface between the nervous system of your body and the NanoTech System, that is, all the other cyborg-bacteria that live throughout the globe.

Physical interface is implemented by the bacteria attached to the nerve fibers in your body, who tap into the action currents in these fibers and convert them into infrared signals used for data exchange between cyborg-bacteria.

Physically, the copying process went as follows: the object to be copied was submerged into a tank with water containing cyborg-bacteria, and these bacteria gradually disassembled, one might even say dissolved, the object atom by atom.

The surface color and reflectivity can also be varied by arranging the bacteria into different configurations, so that light waves of one wavelength cancel each other, while the waves of another length reinforce each other, giving the object a certain color, making it light or dark.