Growth Curve of S. Pneumoniae

Abstract

Pneumocococcus or S.pneumoniae, a member of Gram-positive Streptococcus Mitis group is capable of causing several severe diseases like bacterial pneumonia, meningitis, bronchitis, otitis media (mid-ear infection). In order to stop these diseases, the preventive therapy appears to be an appropriate option because of our antibiotic resistance crisis born in 1960 in Tokyo Hospital (Japan) in the treatment of Shigellosis has not yet been solved. The causative pathogen Shigella flexneri is a close kin of our non-pathogenic E.coli K-12. In the absence of any alternative therapy, our clinicians have been increasing the doses of antibiotics with longer duration but now in 2022 we are almost standing against the wall. How about our vaccines? That could have been a real solution but the antigenic variation of this bacterial pathogen may not guarantee the successful treatment. Did we try to understand how such variants of the pathogen arise? One possibility appears to be a collaborative effort of bacteria and their bacteriophages (viruses). We have extensively studied lysogeny with E.coli K-12 and its virus bacteriophage lambda. Such a lysogenic state may not be limited to just bacterial pathogen but the virus COVID-19 (RNA genome) in our respiratory cells may be responsible for their antigenic variation.