Place: World of Microorganisms

It was early dawn of June 15th, 1948, near Mumbai city, then known as Bombay. A very hot sweaty period. Monsoons had not yet set in. In the big old-fashioned Incubator Chamber Unit (ICU) in City hospital in South Mumbai, the pus bacterium was breathing heavily on the bed of nutrient agar.

Earlier that evening, a human had put the pus bacterium (isolated from an infected patient’s wound) on that agar bed along with a small amount of antibiotic Penicillin. That was the first time a bacterium was exposed to such a killer chemical. Humans tried checking if that pus bacterium from the patient was sensitive to Penicillin.

The parents and friends of the pus bacterium panicked. They were crying continuously by secreting some juices and shaking their pili and flagella. Pili and flagella help bacteria in moving from one place to another. Antibiotic degradation specialist Dr Bacillus Khurana and head-nurse Ms. Streptocoki continuously monitored the pus bacteria on the bed. Outside the ICU, thousands of microbes such as TB bacteria, leprosy bacteria, yeasts, viruses and molds gathered in a few hours to enquire about the health of the pus bacteria. The news spread in the world of microbes like cyclone.

That was big news on all-night radio channels with breaking news slogans like,

“We hate humans for the creation of such toxic material to destroy microbes on the earth”,

“This is an injustice to microbe’s life on earth”,

“This earth also belongs to microbes”,

“Why only humans should have all the fun on earth”,

Some rebelling statements in the media, “Let us do something to teach a lesson to this cruel human”… 

On the other side, at the ICU in City hospital,

At 3 AM, there was a press release from the Press Trust of International Microorganisms (PTI-m) to stop human cruelty against microbes. Dr Khurana and his medical interns Dr Yeast, and Dr Cocci were trying their best to recover the pus bacteria.

Now the pus bacteria had almost stopped its motion. Its flagella were hardly moving. Respiration rate reduced to the lowest level. Its skin (cell envelope) started secreting certain internal juices. Nurse Streptocoki ran out of the ICU to bring saline and glucose to rehydrate the pus bacteria. Outside the nutrient agar plate, the crowd increased to millions in a few hours due to continuous binary fissions of gathered bacteria and fungi. Even in the dark night, some microorganisms were enjoying casein drinks at micro-cafes in the incubator (home to microbes). Some were having junk nutrients like whey-proteins, IMVIC-cola, etc.

Early morning there was a big blast on microbes. The baby Pus bacterium breathed its last. There were massive waves of bacterial tears in the City hospital. Soon, news came in that in almost 52 hospitals in Mumbai, thousands of bacteria were counting their last minutes due to penicillin and 100 were dead. Mini-vans were taking sick bacteria to hospitals. The news spread across the country within a couple of days. The fatality rate was extremely high. Within a week, millions of bacteria died due to penicillin. All microorganisms were worried about their lives. Until then, they were enjoying their carefree lives, growing anywhere, at any time. Penicillin, the first killer of microbes, had become the talk of the country. Humans were very happy. This molecule became a big challenge for microbes and the number one villain. Soon, the use of penicillin became wider in humans. “The Times of Microbes” (ToM), the number one newspaper introduced a column of daily bacterial deaths due to penicillin. It increased from million to trillions in two weeks. Micro-radios at that time were full of interviews by senior-scientist bacteria, and old veteran microorganisms from marshes, about possible remedies to save the bacterial community. A group, Photobacteria organized blue and green light-emitting micro-candles for a few hours on the peaceful waves of the Arabian Sea. It was their way of offering condolences for the demise of trillions of microbes. Prayers were organized in prayer houses by peace-loving microbes priests – Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium.

On 29th June, all microbes in the country were eager to listen to the interview of Dr Flue, a Nobel laureate in Peace for the year 1932, during the 5th world war of microbes. He said, “… this is the toughest time in the history for microbes. Please do not panic. There is a solution for everything and our fellow microbes who are doing research are close to finding one to this problem. Until we have a favourable solution, select only those places for growing where the possibility of use of penicillin is very remote …”. This motivating speech really boosted the morale of the heartbroken microbes.

On 30th June, 1948, there was big news in the history of microbes. Dr Amiba, from the fertile soil of Saras Baug from Pune, discovered a chemical called Inductrin. Due to the urgency of the situation, he injected Inductrin in 1000 penicillin-affected victims of pus bacteria and other bacterial patients. Within two hours, almost 99.2 penicillin-attacked bacteria recovered. Post-recovery, these recovered bacteria carried on with normal lives. This news grabbed the headlines in all newspapers. The radio had Dr Amiba’s interviews almost every day. Everyone was asking how Inductrin works. Dr Amiba gave a simple explanation. “See, the mechanism is simple. Inductrin induces the metabolism of the penicillin-affected bacteria to start secreting an enzyme, “penicillinase”. This enzyme breaks down penicillin molecules in the external surroundings of these bacteria making the chemical unavailable to attack other bacteria. Moreover, this property of penicillin-degrading enzyme production passes ahead to the next generations of bacteria”. Inductrin became a boon protecting bacteria against Penicillin. It was very cost-effective and easily available to all bacteria.

Since then, penicillin became almost ineffective against bacteria. The bacteria became resistant to it. That was the beginning of the era of Anti-Microbial Resistance (AMR) for humans. The curse of bacteria affected humans badly because a stage came when Penicillin became useless while controlling human bacterial infections.

Humans, being super evolved creatures, discovered a whole range of new powerful antibiotics such as Streptomycin, Tetracyclines, Erythromycin and Vancomycin within the next 2-3 years. Now this time, that was a PANDEMIC situation for almost all bacteria. It was a terrible situation for microbes. Every day trillions of bacteria died in various hospitals and clinics.

However, there was another side to the story. Humans were inadvertently killing friendly bacteria while attempting to kill infection-causing bacteria. That created more fury among all bacterial groups against humans. But as the saying goes, “For every lock, there is a key, but you must identify it.” So, the scientist bacteria from the Royal Institutes of Bacteria (RIB), who were researching this topic found that these antibiotics attack them by entering through specific receptors (locks) on their surface. Antibiotic molecular corners act as keys to open these locks to enter the bacteria and kill them. The RIB team developed aroma vaccine molecules for bacteria as a preventive measure. So, all newborn bacteria and other microbes were given the new RIB vaccine which changed their body surface locks. Gradually all populations of bacteria were vaccinated, and the brand-new drugs became useless. That was the second biggest failure of this “Superhuman” in combat with bacteria. So, AMR spread like wildfire among humans all over the earth.

Once again, humans started scratching their heads to overcome AMR. Bacteria were able to enjoy a few peaceful months. The worried human began research with more advanced ways and tools. Also, to take revenge against bacteria, he started using antibiotics, not only as medicine but also in cosmetics, soaps, handwashes, face washes, feed for poultry, etc. Many doctors began prescribing heavy doses of antibiotics, even if the requirement was not there. This massive use of antibiotics induced the massive use of the RIB vaccine by bacteria to make AMR stronger. In the 1960s, newer antibiotics, such as methicillin, ampicillin, cephalosporin, doxycycline, rifampicin and cefalexin, etc., were introduced in the clinics. For humans, it was the golden era of antibiotics. Now, the microbes were well intelligent from experience. Their research and work on self-gene modification helped them to create massive resistance against almost all antibiotics in the clinics. Humans accelerated antiobiotic development. But parallelly, microbes developed resistance to all newly launched antibiotics, leading to millions of human deaths annually. This war continues to date. The powerful bacteria are making humans spend huge amounts of funds, energy, and skills in antibiotic discovery to overcome AMR. The human ego to kill all microbes by overuse and misuse of antibiotics is coming back to them.

But peace-loving bacteria warns humans from time to time, “Do not underestimate the power of us tiny creatures. If you want to co-exist with us on Earth, stop overuse and misuse of antibiotics NOW to stop AMR.”