Bacteris In The Hot Zone

Historically Ebola has had a serious impact on human health and hygiene and still does due to the fact of no vaccine or treatment being discovered, but thanks to improvements in scientific and medical knowledge the virus itself is now controllable.

In his book The Hot Zone, Richard Preston accounts the journey of the hemorrhagic fevers from their first modern appearances in 1967 to 1993. Preston follows twelve characters along their journey working with or against Ebola. “Charles Monet” was a Frenchman who explored Kitum Cave on New Years eve 1980 and violently dies of Marburg 2 days later. He is the first case since the original outbreak in Germany in 1967, which was believed to be caused by the shipment of monkeys from West Africa. LTC Nancy Jaax was an Army veterinary pathologist who begins working with the Ebola virus in 1983, and then becomes chief of Pathology at USAMRIID in 1989, as such she is heavily involved in the Reston monkey house disaster. COL Jerry Jaax, husband to Nancy was chief of the veterinary division as USAMRIID. He also lead the SWAT team that took over the Reston monkey house. “Peter Cardinal” was a Danish boy who died of Marburg in 1987 after visiting Kitum Cave. Eugene Johnson was a civilian virus hunter, specializing in Ebola. In 1988 he lead an Army expedition to Kitum Cave following the death of “Peter Cardinal”. Dan Dalgard was lead veterinarian at the

The Hot Zone, by Richard Preston, is a non-fiction story about the deadly virus (Ebola) spreading throughout the world. Certain strains of this virus are 90% fatal, and cause horrible symptoms, such as facial drooping, muscle aches, reddened eyes, and puking. The Ebola virus was traced back to a man named Charles Monet. After Monet, the virus spread rapidly, and it was leaving no survivors.

Richard Preston, the author of The Hot Zone, wanted us to believe two things. The first is that the viruses explained throughout the novel, such as Marburg and Ebola, are nature’s defense against the “infectious parasite” that the human race is on this planet. He emphasizes that the horrible viruses are the earth’s way of punishing the human race for taking over and for preventing their future expansion. The second thing he wanted us to believe is the idea that the Ebola virus could spread very rapidly if it’s airborne. In today’s society, with the use of airplanes, it’s very easy for viruses such as Ebola which are airborne to spread all over the world, and “feed” on a variety of hosts around the world. In the novel, many of the outbreaks

The Hot Zone, written by Richard Preston is the true and dramatic story of the outbreaks of the frightening, unknown and incurable filoviruses; Marburg, Ebola Zaire, Ebola Sudan and Ebola Reston. This book covers the first documented outbreak of the virus and continues to cover more outbreaks over the course of 23 years. These sisters viruses are highly infective and destroyed entire communities throughout Africa with the deaths of 50- 90% of their victims. The effects are similar and horrifying with the viruses penetrating every tissue and organ in the body of a person, primate or other animal. This book takes place in the late 1980s and is based on an outbreak of Ebola in a monkey house in the quaint town of Reston, Virginia. Richard Preston incorporates tales of several outbreaks that occurred in Africa years before to describe the potential destruction that the filoviruses could

“The Hot Zone” by Richard Preston is a famous nonfiction thriller detailing the vivid history of the Ebola virus and the terrifying consequences of its infections. Using a rich vocabulary to add as much imagery as possible, the novel immerses you in Ebola’s history and keeps you glued to the edge of your seat with suspenseful chapters that fill you with dreadful expectation. The novel is mostly well executed in it’s aim at keeping the reader engaged while still remaining true to science though it achieves most of its power by using what seems to be cheap scare tactics and over dramatization. To a reader without a scientific background “The Hot Zone” will be an exhilarating ride, but to others, it may be a slightly overwritten drama that tries

Ebola had already been spotlighted in the media by the 1987 novel Outbreak and 1994’s best-seller nonfiction novel The Hot Zone. The Hot Zone reached number seven on the New York Times nonfiction best-seller list in August of 2014. However, the novel has been “criticized as sensationalist”, using early Ebola outbreaks as a mode for entertainment and excitement. According to Brooke Borel of Popular Science, “these stories provide a catharsis for some of our deepest fears about the invisible threat of a pathogen”, but “they also exacerbate our fears in the real world”. Media was able to warp the threat that Ebola actually posed to the United States, exaggerating the risk the average American faced. The term “germ panic” accurately describes the American perception of Ebola through the lens of popular media and entertainment: a panic that seeped its way into the American mindset, creating a sense of fear that was disproportionate to the actual risk of epidemic. Nancy Tomes, a historian who has studied germ panic, said that “the current Ebola cases came… during a period of distrust of experts as well as a tense geopolitical climate”. The panic surrounding Ebola was amplified by the simultaneous “distrust of experts” and the detail at which science has discovered the inner workings of diseases and epidemics. In the context of media and pop culture, panic seemed to dominate the American response to the Ebola

The Hot Zone tells many incidents about Ebola cases and what happened to the people who were sick and how we tried to cure it. The author Richard Preston is very good at using plot, character, setting,and theme to create a science fiction piece. Theme was one of the primary ways science fiction was portrayed. Theme uses scientific vocabulary. On page 18 “vomito negro” is the substance that you spew when you have Ebola.

Tom Geisbert beings to panic because he believes his has stumbles along Ebola Marburg. He is frightened because he also was exposed to it about ten days before he found it. To make matters worse, he wasn’t the only one, C. J. Peters and Peter Jahrling were also exposed to the virus.

Three bacteria's that live in the human body are Bifidobacterium, Escherichia Coli, and Streptococcus. One of the bacteria's that live in our body is Bifidobacterium longum. This is a multi-faceted extremely friendly bacterium that resides in the digestive tract and helps to keep the whole digestive system running smoothly. B. longum also inhibits the growth of pathogenic bacteria and it produces lactic acid. This can help people who are lactose intolerant. They are believed to be one of the most dominant friendly bacterial species that live inside us, and are early colonizers of the digestive tract of newborn infants. Some health benefits are: stimulation

Every person has bacteria that inhabit the skin and other body parts. Most of the bacteria are normal and not harmful to the individual. Certain types of bacteria inhabit different parts of the body because of the different resources the environment offers for the various bacteria. There are bacteria that thrive in the skin folds of humans because the moisture level and there is also a high salt level there, for example. The normal flora are opportunistic, and they need a way of entry in order to be harmful to the individual. Neisseria, Staphylococcus aureus, and Streptococcus are examples of bacteria that if given the opportunity can be harmful to humans. Growing the bacteria, gram staining and performing an oxidase test can be done

Responses to environmental stress have been described in Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis. These studies have shown that bacteria display elaborate responses to environmental stress which improve survival by altering bacterial physiology. The SOS response is induced when bacteria are threatened by the presence of agents that cause DNA damage which enhance the bacterium’s ability to repair DNA and inhibit cell division,[26]. The stringent response, in the face of nutrient limitation, decreases protein synthesis and stimulates amino acid biosynthesis when protein synthesis substrates are scarce,[27-28]. Heat shock factors are expressed at raised temperatures that break down and restructure denatured proteins and also restore alterations to chromosomal topology that occur as a result of temperature,[29-30]. Finally components of the cold shock response have been shown to alter mRNA secondary structures, formed as a result of low temperature, which hinder the translational machinery,[31, 31].

In 2014, the United States was in an out-of-control panic due to Ebola haemorrhagic fever. Fear swept the nation with the news of the deaths of victims of the disease, though there were only four cases that were diagnosed exclusively in the United States. So what made this disease such a cause for concern, and should it be a concern today? Certainly there are plenty of conspiracy theories surrounding the prospect of cultivating Ebolavirus into a biological weapon, and many people are scared that we are not ready in the case that Ebola makes a comeback. According to my research, such worries are not completely dismissible.

Description of non-pathogen: Streptococcus thermophilus is a gram-positive, alpha-hemolytic, cocci bacterium typically found in pairs or chains (2). It is catalase, oxidase, and cytochrome-negative, is unable to form spores, and does not display motility (1). As its name suggests, Streptococcus thermophilus is a thermophile that can grow at temperatures between 35° C and 42° C, but thrives at the top of that range (8). Streptococcus thermophilus is primarily used as a starter culture for a variety of fermented dairy foods, including yogurt and cheese, and is also found in the digestive tract of humans (1). Streptococcus thermophilus is not pathogenic to humans and is commonly taken in supplement form as a probiotic to relieve various symptoms of gastrointestinal disorders like lactose intolerance (1). Streptococcus thermophilus is a facultative anaerobe and is classified as a lactic acid bacterium, meaning that lactic acid is the primary metabolic product of fermentation (1,7). It uses a lactose transporter called LacS that employs a proton gradient to amass galactoside within the bacterial cell (7). This collection of galactose allows for the exchange of lactose for galactose, and the released lactose is leveraged to create energy (7). Streptococcus thermophilus also contains a proteolytic component that is composed of oligopeptidase and aminopeptidase PepS, both of which are essential to proper bacterial function and

The purpose of the two experiments was to determine the fundamental effects that temperature has on the growth and survival of bacteria. During the first experiment five different bacterial broth cultures of Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas fluorescens, Enterococcus faecalis, Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus stearothermophilus were individually incubated at temperatures of 5, 25, 37, 45 and 55°C for one week in an aim to distinguish the effect temperature has on growth and survival of the five different species. After one week they were observed for distinguishable changes by the turbidity showing an indication of bacterial growth, or the clarity an indication of no survival.