The Life of Bacteria at KAUST

Since I have been asked a number of times to share some of my top-secret research, I have finally given in and will try to educate the sheep (Jesus tried and failed, so I guess it's my turn now).

Bacteria are unicellular, small, and often round, beings that like to eat and produce energy. Similar to humans, these beings are driven by the need to reproduce, but since they have no legs, they cannot go about it in the conservative christian fashion. Instead, Bacteria perform something that scientists call asexual reproduction. The process is fairly complicated, but the outcome is simple: 1 bacterium divides into 2 bacteria.

Click on the picture above to have an accredited Youtube actor explain it with the help of visual cues. I know that reading and comprehending is difficult!

These little beasts can be found everywhere: in the soil, in the trees, in the air, in your own body, and even in the Red Sea. Particularly in the Red Sea actually. You can imagine the Red Sea as being very similar to your standard bacteria soup, one tea spoon of it contains millions of different bacteria that all get along. Whales love bacteria and eat them for breakfast. 

Since I am working in the Red Sea Research Center, one of our main concerns is trying to understand what kind of bacteria are actually in this Red Sea Soup. Who is the most abundant, who is the coolest, who is the strongest, who is the most exotic, and who is the most extreme, are just some of the questions your typical Red Sea Scientist will ask himself/herself.

I know that I promised to lift the secret of the reproductive method of the giant bacterium E. fishelsoni, but that result will take more time. Instead I would like to focus on a tiny bacteria called SAR11. With a size of less than 0.3 micrometers (1 million micrometer = 1 meter), this beast is the most abundant bacteria in all of the oceans, making up around 60% of the total bacterial population. However, SAR11 highly dislikes growing in the laboratory and has resisted scientific characterization since we took off our monkey suit way back when. Well, it is this bacterium that my supervisor is trying to get cultivated, characterized, and civilized, a task I am doing my best to assist her with.

So far, I have been given a number of bacterial strains (i.e. bacteria families including the extended family) to keep alive and have also been given the engineering task of getting a 6-chamber bioreactor up and running. This bioreactor will be able to do a lot of our work (inshallah), and is going to be responsible for the transcriptomic studies (the study of which miniscule machines [proteins] the bacteria are producing to survive different environmental conditions).

6 chamber Bioreactor "Multifor 2" from Infors Inc

Now I don't want to overwhelm you by revealing my results ahead of time, such as by saying that bacteria actually have feelings and that brushing your teeth is a crime, so I will continue this post once I have drawn up some more definitive conclusions.