Basic Information
The term Bacteria applies to a large class of micro-organisms. They are simple, single-celled critters, and believed to be among the first life-forms appearing on earth. They can be found pretty much everywhere, even in environments where life should not be possible (although a lot of these are actually archaea rather than bacteria which are, as the name suggests, even more primitive). For reference, bacteria and archaea are two domains of the "empire" prokarya, with all other known organisms belonging to the "empire" of eukarya.
Bacterial cells are characterised by a lack of internal structures (called organelles), as well as by the molecular size and complexity of various internal enzymes (these differences sort them from archaea as well as eukaryotes).
Some cause diseases, but others have beneficial, symbiotic relationships with their environment, as the flora in the gut which help digest food. That said, even these are a matter of time and place - in their right place, in a balanced population, they are beneficial … when their population is out of balance, or living in the wrong part of the body, they can still cause trouble.
Bacteria are also useful in various forms of biotechnology ranging from cheese and yogurt making using lactobacilli to recombinant bacteria cultures expressing custom proteins. Decay bacteria are using in sewage treatment and composting and custom strains can be built to consume otherwise indestructible chemicals and to scavenge radioisotopes from the environment.
Where bacteria are causing a problem, there is the potential to use antibiotics - a loose term for any compound that is preferentially toxic to bacteria. As with any poison, however, it is entirely possible for bacteria to build up immunity to them, which can cause serious issues in healthcare scenarios where they are over-relied upon and /or over used.
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Game and Story Use
- Knowing that these things exist is a big part of the battle - prior to that, everything from cheese making to wound treatment was done on precedent and poorly based theory. After the discovery of "germ" theory, and the idea that they were a form of life made it possible to take organised measures to control them.