During house arrest, I decided to use the time and compile a list of bacterial superpowers. I asked the Twitter community what their favourite bacterial superpowers are and got some interesting results.

Sporulation!! Bioremediation!!



(Plus making all the best foods like wine, beer, bread, cheese, chocolate) — Rachel Burckhardt, Ph.D.🦠 (@RMBurckhardt) March 17, 2020

(I couldn’t agree more!)

I then mixed all the answers with my own favourite bacterial superpowers and with an idea I already had before together with Dr Joana Moscoso.

You can also understand this list as 20 reasons why I think bacteria are absolutely fascinating.

20 bacterial superpowers

Every day during our house arrest I posted about one fact that I consider a bacterial superpower and here I am going to share this list with you.

1. Bacteria know exactly where they are going

Bacteria have a so-called flagellum with which they can swim in liquids. With a system which is called chemotaxis, bacteria sense where the nutrients are and they can swim towards the nutrient or away from harmful compounds.

Read more about this fascinating mechanism in my article Chemotaxis helps bacteria move towards goodies

2. High-speed swimming

Many bacteria are able to move in aqueous environments. One type of these movements is called swimming and is driven by a structure called flagella that rotates. The Olympic recordist for 50 metres freestyle swims 1.17 body lengths per second. However, the bacterium Escherichia coli swims 15 body lengths per second and the tiny Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus swims even 10x faster, moving 160 body lengths in one second.

Picture adapted from Iida et al.

3. Oxygen production

This may sound a little trivial because we take oxygen for granted, but the first oxygen produced in this planet came from bacteria known as cyanobacteria. A large part of the atmosphere’s oxygen today is produced in oceans by these bacteria and other single-celled organisms.

More on cyanobacteria you can find in this article.

Picture from Costa et al.

Some bacteria can align into long filaments into so-called cable bacteria. This alignment allows bacteria to produce electrons on one side by oxidising metals and transport these electrons along the filament. On the other side of the filament, the electrons are being used for oxygen reduction. Thus, bacteria can produce an electric current within certain water sediments, which researchers measured before and maybe one day will be able to apply in some kind of seawater-based batteries.

Some bacteria, like the Magnetospirillum, that live in water, have so-called magnetosomes. These are storage place for crystal-like structures that are based on iron compositions. The iron inside can align with a magnetic field, even the magnetic Earth field. Many aligned magnetosomes give a magnetic momentum to the bacterium. This helps the bacterium to align itself parallel with the magnetic field.

Read more about how bacteria sense the magnetic field.

Magnetosomes in bacteria are the black dots that are perfectly aligned to a chain. Figure taken from Monteil and Levefre, 2019

6. Gold-producing bacteria (a highly valuable bacterial superpower!)

Researchers found bacteria in gold mines in Australia that could form biofilms and grow on gold particles. Bacteria like Delftia acidovorans and Cupriavidus metallidurans actively reduce toxic gold-ions to elementary gold. Hence, these bacteria are directly involved in the biogeochemical cycling of this precious metal.

Figure adapted from Reith et al., 2009

Another one of my favourite superpower of bacteria is their ability to kill neighbouring bacteria. They evolved many deadly weapons that shoot deadly toxins into whatever comes near them to assure their own survival.

Bacteria help us digest our food and protect our body. Without them, our body would surely not work the same. Also, bacteria produce important vitamins for us as well as break down highly complex nutrient.⁠

Image by Noemie Matthey

9. A lighting superpower

Some bacteria can produce light, a process called bioluminescence.

Interestingly, bioluminescent bacteria can be found associated with another organism in symbiosis. For example, the bioluminescent bacteria occupy the lure of the female anglerfish, which it uses as a fishing rod for hunting.

Image by Noemie Matthey

10. Thermophilic bacteria

Some amazing bacteria can survive at temperatures as low as -20°C and are called hypothermophiles. Others live in hot water steams up to 122°C, which we call hyperthermophiles. These kind of extremophiles have special repair enzymes that keep their DNA and cell envelope intact even at such extreme temperatures. Some of these enzymes are being used for research and are our day-to-day tools in the lab.

Applications of thermophilic bacteria, adapted from Mehta et al., 2016

11. Radiotolerant bacteria

Bacteria, like the radiotolerant Deinococcus radiodurans, have very efficient proteins to protect their DNA. Or they produce special DNA repair mechanisms that super quickly recognize and repair any damage in the DNA after exposure to radiation. With these mechanisms, these extremophiles can survive exposure to ionizing radiation. Some bacteria even survive in the cooling systems of nuclear reactors.

Radiotolerance is mediated by special enzymes within bacteria. Figure taken from Ranawat & Rawat, 2017

12: Spore formation

Some bacteria can form so-called spores which are like bacteria “on hold”. Bacteria go into this state in times of greatest starvation or drought to keep its genetic material safe while turning down all non-essential functions. In this state, bacteria do not have an active metabolism or interact with the environment. They solely wait for better times to come until nutrients become available again.

Read more about bacterial sporulation.

Spores of bacteria (left) and fungi (right). Pictures taken from Selvakumar et al, 2016 and Babu et al, 2018.

13. Food producing bacteria (My favourite bacterial superpower!)

Did you know that bacteria produce many of the foods you are consuming? By fermenting sugars to alcohols or acids, lactic bacteria or yeasts give a delicious taste to common foods like cheese, yoghurt and kefir, kimchi and sauerkraut, beer and wine, as well as chocolate.

If you ask me, just by making chocolate, bacteria are my favourite superheroes :)

14: High-pressure endurance

Researchers found bacteria that can live up to 10 km deep inside the ocean, so they can endure pressures of up to 100 MPa. We don’t know yet how these bacterial cells function at such high pressure. However, scientists think that the proteins inside these bacteria form some kind of super glue-like complexes. This would make the bacterial content more viscous to endure the pressure.

Bacteria can survive 10 km below the water surface. Picture taken from Skoma et al, 2016.

15: Oil-production

Many microorganisms, amongst them bacteria, are known produce natural oil and are thus called oleaginous microorganisms. Mainly algae, bacteria and yeasts can produce biodiesel, while fungi, and some algae are well known to be producers of the healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Focus of research is now to engineer these organisms to enhance the accumulation of produced lipids, biodiesel and omega-3 fatty acids.

Oils produced by bacteria have many different application. Picture taken from Patel et al., 2020.

16: DNA repair

Bacteria have to endure all sorts of environmental stresses, temperature changes, antibiotic or challenges by competitors. To ensure that under all circumstances, their DNA will survive any attack undamaged, bacteria developed incredible efficient DNA repair and fixing machines, which can recognise any little damage in the DNA strands. These machine are activated by the so called SOS response only in times of greatest stress.

bacteria can activate an SOS response to fix their broken DNA. Picture adapted from Baharoglu & Mazel, 2014

17: Ice-nucleation

Some bacteria can induce water to form ice crystals at a temperature close to the melting point. These bacteria, like Pseudomonas syringae have ice-nucleating proteins on their outer surface that interacts with the water layer and trigger ice formation. These bacteria are even used to produce artificial snow in winter sports areas around the world.

Bacteria can trigger ice nucleation. Video by Mark Martin.

18: Bioremedation

Some bacteria surely love their heavy metals! Many bacteria have special enzymes that can reduce toxic metal ions. These bacteria are used to clean waste in industrial waters or mines and are often seen as the basic for green chemistry.

Picture taken from Ayangbenro et al., 2018.

Some bacteria were found that can cleave off sugar molecules from human red blood cells. While this is only to feed the little ones, in a clinical test this would look as if the blood type actually changed. However, as soon as the body produces new blood cells, these would carry the “correct” sugars and therefore the normal blood type.

Read more about this mechanism this article.

Bacteria can cleave off certain sugars on our blood cells which leads to a temporary change in blood type.

20. Super small size

Super small but super powerful! While bacteria have all these previously mentioned superpower, I am most amazed by the fact that they are so teeny tiny and SO powerful. All these superpowers in such a small box! To actually “see” bacteria, we need microscopes and to have real good photographs of them like in the photo above, we need EXTREMELY good microscopes. The bacterial cells in the pictures here are just about 2 micro meters long…

Bacteria are just about 2 micrometers long. Figure adapted from Ferreira et al. 2019, and Matula et al. 2019.

More about bacterial superpowers

Okay, here you have a list of 20 bacterial superpowers. And I hope I could convince you that bacteria are just awesome. If you need more proof or want to learn more about any of these superpowers, head to the bacterial superpower category!

And don’t forget to let me know which one of these is your favourite bacterial superpower! Which one bacterial superpower would you love to learn more about? Let me know in the comments or send me an email. Can’t wait to hear from you :)