What connects the Yellowstone National Park, Egyptian mummies and fighting the Covid-19 pandemic?
This is a story about a bacteria that changed the world!🦠🦠
An amazing mid-week history story that you never knew!
Read along 🧵
Yellowstone National Park, in western USA, is sort of a living volcano with lots of hot springs, boiling pools and other geothermal fantasies.
In 1969, microbiologist Thomas Brock was visiting the park to test water samples from these boiling hot springs!
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No one expected life to survive in those high temperatures. But to Brock's surprise, there was a bacteria living in it at 80C degrees
It was named Thermus Acquaticus - the one that can live in hot water
It was fascinating, but it just stayed a lab curiosity for the next 20 yrs
Cut to late 1980s. American Biochemist Kary Mullis was trying to replicate copies of DNA from a small sample such that it can be studied in more detail for gene analysis
We didnt have a powerful microscope to look at a small DNA sequence. So replication was a mandatory need.
This could help in many things. Better gene research, archaeological analysis, dating of mummies, identifying criminals in forensics, accurate paternity tests etc etc
Till then, none of these could be done very accurately and Mullis was trying to solve it by replicating DNA
He devised a process where a small piece of DNA was heated until it split. Then an enzyme called Polymerase was used to make another copy of the DNA.
By repeating this process, we could make millions of copies to be studied in more detail. 25 cycles meant 30 million DNA copies!
But the issue was that this Polymerase died on heating as it couldnt survive high temperatures. Mullis then looked up our friend from 1969
Thermus Acquaticus - born for high temperatures. He used it in his process & boom, he could now create a chain reaction of DNA copying! 🧬🧬
Thus was born Polymerase Chain Reaction, short for PCR! Mullis had changed the world overnight and got the 1993 Nobel prize in Medicine for this
We could do better cultural studies using genes, find relatives of Tutankhamun, identify murder criminals, do accurate paternity tests
PCR helped in all sort of gene analysis but was still a complex science term only for 30 years
Till 2020. When the Covid Pandemic hit.
You know where this is going.
We needed a quick way to find if our body had the Coronavirus without extensive lab testing.
Enter RT-PCR!
RT-PCR was a form of Covid testing where a small nasal swab from our body can give multi million copies of DNA which can be examined for the total count of Virus in our body.
We saved millions of lives using a science that wouldn't have existed without this volcanic bacteria!
A bacteria found 50yrs ago that could survive at high temperatures helped us fight the pandemic!
Who knew that even volcanic pool water can be sweeter than nectar!
One cannot not marvel at the great wonder of nature here!
RT if you liked this crazy story & follow for more🦠🧬
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