Some deep-sea bacteria are invisible to our immune system
Recommended for Secondary Grades
What does our immune system do?
Our immune system fights off infection. It does this by detecting and catching harmful bacteria or viruses that may have entered our bodies.
However, it turns out that some bacteria may be completely “invisible” to our immune system. These bacteria live in the deep ocean. They are so strange to our bodies that our immune cells do not even register that they exist. This new finding is a huge surprise to scientists.
How did they make this discovery?
For a long time, science has believed that that the human immune system had evolved to be able to detect every single microbe. This was so it could catch the dangerous ones.
Scientists wanted to test this theory. They wanted to find bacteria that might never have been in contact with the immune systems of mammals.
They went looking for such bacteria in a spot deep in the central Pacific Ocean, around the island nation of Kiribati. The scientists used an underwater robot to collect sea bacteria from samples of water and marine animals.
Then, they grew them in a lab. After this, they introduced the bacteria to mouse and human immune cells. To their surprise, they found that many of the bacteria were “invisible” to the immune cells.
Should we be worried?
But, not to worry. Scientists said that these deep-sea bacteria are not dangerous to us. They have not evolved to harm us. They will also likely find it hard to live outside their natural environments – the deep sea.
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