14 DAY TRIAL // A team of scientists with the University of Zürich, in Switzerland, was recently able to demonstrated in a new study that multiple microbe species invading the human body at the same time are able to communicate with each other by sharing the same food source. This finding is very important because microbes that coordinate their defense efforts are more difficult to destroy.
When we are infected by single parasites, the matter of killing them off is relatively straightforward. Not so when multiple species attack at the same time. Professor Owen Petchey from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies at UZ led a team of scientists that was able to produce a list of how microbes can interact with each other.
Most likely, the group explains, interactions occur indirectly, by sharing the same food source. This conclusion is based on data analyzing more than 1,400 species of parasites, ranging from protozoa and fungi to bacteria and viruses. Details of the study appear in the latest issue of the esteemed journal Proceedings of Royal Society B, Technology reports.
Working with colleagues at the universities of Liverpool, Sheffield and Edinburgh, the Swiss team was able to determine that, of all possibilities analyzed in this research, competition over the same food source was the most likely to promote parasite cooperation.
“We found twice as many parasites fighting for the same energy source as parasites that elicit the same immune response and are able to interact in that way. The manner in which the immune system responds to the individual pathogens seems to be of secondary importance, despite the fact that other studies pointed towards precisely this,” Petchey explains.