Posted Jan. 24, 2023, 1:49 p.m. by Gamemaster CockRoach (Gamemaster) (Robert Archer)
[snip]
Cross was by now sitting in the Medical lab in sickbay, wearing protective clothing .Opening the Bio-Hazard package which held the Bacteria,she viewed it under the microscope to see whether it was a Gram negative or Gram positive .Then smeared the slide with one of the swabs taken from the infected two NC’s nostrils and put some drops of acid fast to dilute it .
Using Ziehl-Neelsen staining to detect acid-fast bacteria. Acid-fast bacteria contain a higher amount of lipid than other types of bacteria, making them resistant to the coloring agents used in Gram staining. Acid-fast bacteria belong to the genus Mycobacterium, which includes the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis). Acid-fast bacteria can be stained with a red carbol-fuchsin dye ..it turned pink.
For a moment Cross stood there staring at nothing, was this the same bacteria that when turned airborne caused tuberculosis? Or something else yet quite similar? .The doctor needed to contact the science dept immediately.
Cross CMO.
M. tuberculosis is more related to Gram-negative than to Gram-positive bacteria as reflected by the evolutionary distance between nearest ancestral units. This conclusion may be supported by another analysis showing that M. tuberculosis shares relatively more orthologous genes for energy production and conversion with Gram-negative bacteria, in particular, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, than with Gram-positive bacteria.
In some people, the bacteria can become active. If this happens, one may become sick, and can pass the TB germs to someone else. Even though one would not feel sick, the person still need to take medicines to treat latent TB for 6 to 9 months. …
Cross smeared some Petri -dishes with the bacteria then put different antibiotics to find which works best . If an antibiotic is found to be more effective, then those infected could be given the antibiotic ,and with the genome now known the science dept could work on a vaccine.
She left the medical lab and would come later on to check the results giving enough time for the different antibiotics to work.
Cross CMO.
Looking through the different samples once she would return, Cross sadly found none of these quite matched their usual expected properties like those say on Earth or similar planets. As had been mentioned though bacterial like the way it acted was also like that of a symbiotic organism. This made it far more complex to treat and the like then a simple bacteria or virus.
As she would be looking over this information one of the newer nurses happened to come over seeing the results and offered a suggestion. “..Ma’am? Perhaps we could be approaching this the wrong way? We keep trying to treat this like we would a usual bacterial strain, but given such known bacteria don’t provide the infected person with symbiotic benefits when infected, perhaps we should look at this more as a symbiont life form? Perhaps if we looked at how its celluar evolution came about on the planet we could see more clues? Given the Klingons have been here up till recently for the past like 30-40 years. Its possible the original bacterial like agent due to the pollutants caused a mutation and evolution in its normal properties over time to what we see now? Not only in the infection but also those infected, locally like that girl? Her body sees it as a natural useful thing to be infected. Not as an enemy..” She suggested.
GM CockRoach
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