Providencia alcalifaciens growing on culture medium
The thing about believing in intelligent design, if that's what Christian and Islamic creationists genuinely do, is that you have to believe the bad stuff is designed by the designer of the good stuff because your religion only allows you to believe in one supreme designer, or you have to believe there is some other entity or force capable of intelligently designing things against which your putative supreme designer is powerless.
The other entity or force is capable of altering your supreme designer's plans at will and there is not a thing the supreme designer can do about it. Even the bizarre and morally repugnant blood sacrifice of its own son didn't give it sufficient power to overcome this rival designer, apparently.
The logic then of insisting there is only one intelligent designer is that the same designer that designs parasites that make us sick, designed our immune system to protect us from its malevolent designs. It needs a private definition of the word 'intelligent' to define that as intelligent design.
As this latest piece of research shows, some bacteria, in this case those that cause food poisoning not only have genes that produce the toxins that make us sick have also been designed to share these genes even with other species, and creationists dogma dictates that creationists believe this can't have evolved by a mindless process, so must be the design by ab intelligence that can only be described as malevolent.
The research was conducted by scientists at the Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Osaka Prefecture University, Osaka, Japan, with colleagues from the School of Environment and Life Sciences, Independent University Bangladesh (IUB), Bashundhara, Dhaka, Bangladesh and the Department of Pediatrics, Mizushima Central Hospital, Okayama, Japan.
The work is explained in a brief press release from Osaka Metropolitan University:
The transfer of pathogenic genes between not only same bacterial species but also different species.Sadly, the scientists' paper in Infection and Immunity is behind a paywall, however the abstract is available:
Latest research reveals the properties of a type of food poisoning bacteria, and paves way for establishment of preventive methods.
The pathogenic genes of Providencia rustigianii can be transferred to Enterobacteriaceae as well.
Credit: Shinji Yamasaki, Osaka Metropolitan University
Recently, Providencia spp. which have been detected in patients with gastroenteritis, and similar to enterohemorrhagic Escherichia coli. O157 and Salmonella spp., have been attracting attention as causative agents of food poisoning. For children with low immunity, food poisoning can be lethal as it causes severe symptoms such as diarrhea and dehydration, so clarifying the source of infection and pathogenic factors of Providencia spp., and establishing preventive methods are urgent issues worldwide.This achievement is expected to provide new insights into the identification of infection routes of Providencia spp. and the establishment of preventive methods for food poisoning.
Professor Shinji Yamasaki, co-senior author
Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences
Osaka Prefecture University, Osaka, Japan
A joint research group led by Professor Shinji Yamasaki, Dr. Sharda Prasad Awasthi, a Specially Appointed Lecturer, and graduate student Jayedul Hassan from the Graduate School of Veterinary Science, Osaka Metropolitan University, determined how the pathogenic genes in some Providencia spp. such as Providencia alcalifaciens and Providencia rustigianii are transferred within bacterial cells of genus Providencia. The group has also elucidated that the pathogenic genes of Providencia rustigianii are also transferred to other bacterial cells belonging to Enterobacteriaceae.
The findings were published in Infection and Immunity.
ABSTRACTAs always, there is an open invitation to creationists to say whether they would prefer us to believe their putative designer, who just happens to be the god of the Bible and Qur'an, is a malevolent god who obsessively designs ways to make his creation sick with parasites, or that parasites are the result of the mindless natural process of evolution - which would let their god off the hook and absolve it of responsibility (but apparently being powerless to maximize the good in the world, or ignorant of, or unconcerned about, suffering).
Providencia rustigianii is potentially enteropathogenic in humans. Recently, we identified a P. rustigianii strain carrying a part of the cdtB gene homologous to that of Providencia alcalifacines that produces an exotoxin called cytolethal distending toxin (CDT), encoded by three subunit genes (cdtA, cdtB, and cdtC). In this study, we analyzed the P. rustigianii strain for possible presence of the entire cdt gene cluster and its organization, location, and mobility, as well as expression of the toxin as a putative virulence factor of P. rustigianii. Nucleotide sequence analysis revealed the presence of the three cdt subunit genes in tandem, and over 94% homology to the corresponding genes carried by P. alcalifaciens both at nucleotide and amino acid sequence levels. The P. rustigianii strain produced biologically active CDT, which caused distension of eukaryotic cell lines with characteristic tropism of CHO and Caco-2 cells but not of Vero cells. S1-nuclease digested pulsed-field gel electrophoresis followed by Southern hybridization analysis demonstrated that the cdt genes in both P. rustigianii and P. alcalifaciens strains are located on large plasmids (140 to 170 kb). Subsequently, conjugation assays using a genetically marked derivative of the P. rustigianii strain showed that the plasmid carrying cdt genes in the P. rustigianii was transferable to cdt gene-negative recipient strains of P. rustigianii, Providencia rettgeri, and Escherichia coli. Our results demonstrated the presence of cdt genes in P. rustigianii for the first time, and further showed that the genes are located on a transferable plasmid, which can potentially spread to other bacterial species.
Hassan Jayedul; Awasthi Sharda Prasad; Hatanaka Noritoshi; Hoang Phuong Hoai; Nagita Akira; Hinenoya Atsushi; Faruque Shah M.; Yamasaki Shinji
Presence of Functionally Active Cytolethal Distending Toxin Genes on a Conjugative Plasmid in a Clinical Isolate of Providencia rustigianii
Infection and Immunity 91(6), e00121-22. DOI: 10.1128/iai.00121-22.
© 2023 American Society for Microbiology.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Anyone with the moral courage and intellectual integrity to rise to the challenge?
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