Ok just saw the first episode of season 4. Anyone who has ever heard me lecture on the importance of distinguishing between Burkholderia mallei and pseudomallei will understand how much pain it caused me
https://twitter.com/billhanage/status/1457544043437645827
For more on what pseudomallei can do, see this recent non pandemic outbreak story foodsafetynews.com/2021/10/rare-b…
B. mallei on the other hand causes glanders (the name of the episode) which is a problem for horses rather than humans. Which confused the heck out of me (especially when a minor character wheels out a “meningitis” vaccine)
It’s actually pretty cool. This shows the relationships between the two named bacteria and a couple other close relatives. You can see that mallei is nested within pseudomallei what does this mean? (Fig from royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…) 
It means Mallei looks like a specific clone or lineage of the greater diversity in pseudomallei, which gained the ability to cause a distinctive disease in horses, and humans raised to species status as a result
See also yersinia pestis and Y. pseudotuberculosis and multiple shigella ‘species’
Humans are really bad at understanding bacteria (as well as viruses)
Humans are really bad at understanding bacteria (as well as viruses)
Anyway this is why as the episode finished I was shouting at the TV “Philip, relax! You’re not a horse!”
To understand why, you should watch the episode after reading the above
To understand why, you should watch the episode after reading the above
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