
Bacteria can 'outsmart' programmed cell death - dnetesn
https://phys.org/news/2019-12-bacteria-outsmart-cell-death.html
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macawfish
Woah... I wonder if bacteria could in some cases drive certain cancers?

Something that fascinates me is just how small many bacteria are. They appear
as specks on the most powerful optical microscopes, if at all. Also, a lot of
bacteria simply can't be cultivated outside of the environment they are
adapted to, and are as such really hard to study.

This study really reminds me of the symbiogenesis framework for thinking about
eukaryotic evolution.

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JPLeRouzic
> Woah... I wonder if bacteria could in some cases drive certain cancers?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinogenic_bacteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinogenic_bacteria)

Very roughly, 1 cancer out of 10 has an infectious cause.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infectious_causes_of_cancer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infectious_causes_of_cancer)

The focus in the last decades was mostly about genetic causes of cancer but as
it happens for other diseases (see recent discussion on Alzheimer), it is now
shifting to other causes. Statnews.com is a good web site to read for lay
people like me, who are interested in serious medical related news.

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Sniffnoy
Clarification: This is about bacteria that hide inside cells to avoid the
immune system; it's about how they then prevent apoptosis of the host cell,
not of themselves (which wouldn't really make sense).

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xyelos
themselves or themcellves? ;)

Thank you for posting this clarification--I was definitely a bit clickbaited
by the article, but it,'s interesting nonetheless.

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abhisuri97
Original paper:
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-019-0620-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-019-0620-5)

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TeMPOraL
PDF: [https://sci-hub.se/10.1038/s41564-019-0620-5](https://sci-
hub.se/10.1038/s41564-019-0620-5)

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lymeeducator
A number of tick borne pathogens have similar capability (Bartonella, etc).

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2746948/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2746948/)

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ianai
So they release lipopolysaccharide and that somehow keeps cells alive? Can
someone eli5 what this suggests?

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darkkindness
If I understand what you're suggesting, lipopolysaccharide doesn't make cells
immortal. It just does the equivalent of making it not work when you hold down
the power button to power cycle and force-shutdown your laptop. It lets your
malware be free to run and send emails without danger of losing its
environment.

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ianai
So what’s the significance of this research? Underscoring the importance of
clearing away senescent cells?

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CardenB
Is it possible for this to cause cancer by causing cells to malfunction in
some way?

