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SOnerd wrote:This is a question that pertains to both microbes and disease for which I have never found a quality answer: What is the difference in diseases caused by bacteria and diseases caused by viruses? Obviously their causative agents differ, but how do the general characteristics differ? For example, does one tend to cause certain different symptoms?

I have looked online for this, and the only things I can find are websites that list characteristics of viruses and bacteria and websites that give examples of diseases caused by each. (And obvious stuff like the fact that antibiotics don't work against viruses).

With viral diseases, the symptoms are largely due to host cells being lysed, and the rest of the symptoms are caused by viral proteins from the capsid or that the virus produces as well as the immune response. Bacterial diseases are caused from bacteria secreting toxins or the host immune response to the bacteria. These differences are why most of the viral diseases cause general cold/flu like symptoms with other more specific symptoms, and bacteria can cause localized diseases that have more specific symptoms.

The answer above me is excellent, so I don't have much to add. Here are a few additional general observations:
1. Eukaryotic pathogens follow the same general (using this broadly) scheme as bacterial ones.
2. There are so many (unrelated) viruses that may cause symptoms in hosts not only similar to each other but, also, to bacteria. Everyone here has experienced this. You go to the doctor only to be told 'It's a virus...' when they rule out bacterial infections.
3. It seems that liver damage is a viral characteristic. See the hepatitis alphabet soup, yellow fever, and mono.

Honestly, I don't think general trends are especially useful either here or elsewhere given the nature of this. What I do recommend is to dive deeper into the individual diseases with progressions that interest you (or are otherwise complicated). I like peptic ulcer disease, cholera, AIDS, rabies, and schistosomiasis, for example. I guess I could throw in chicken pox, too.

At my first invitational, my partner and I double and triple checked the list of diseases, yet on the test there was one that was not on the list (typhus). Anyone have any idea why?

Typhus is not on the list that I've been using. All I can think of is that it is caused by the same bacteria (Rickettsia) that cause RM Spotted Fever.

Alex-RCHS wrote:Typhus is not on the list that I've been using. All I can think of is that it is caused by the same bacteria (Rickettsia) that cause RM Spotted Fever.

We guessed it was a bacteria (and got it right) but we are just wondering why. Thanks!

Sasstiel wrote:

Alex-RCHS wrote:Typhus is not on the list that I've been using. All I can think of is that it is caused by the same bacteria (Rickettsia) that cause RM Spotted Fever.

We guessed it was a bacteria (and got it right) but we are just wondering why. Thanks!

I printed out some old test from one of the resource CDs (the 2011 regional competition test), and it had a question asking the type of agent that causes typhus. My guess is that it may have once been on the disease list, and whoever was writing your test may have ripped it from an old test.

Edit: I just looked at the training handout from 2011. Typhus was indeed one of the bacterial diseases on the list that year.

hi,
does anyone know where i can find a good source on comparing and contrasting all the different types of microbes? like obviously their purposes and appearance are different but is there anything else?
also, invitationals are usually harder than regionals.... right?

esha wrote:hi,
does anyone know where i can find a good source on comparing and contrasting all the different types of microbes? like obviously their purposes and appearance are different but is there anything else?
also, invitationals are usually harder than regionals.... right?

There is a ton of information, like textbooks have different chapters on different microbes and websites have tons of info on way too much stuff, but for me the best way to understand the difference between microbes was to make tables comparing them. I listed out all the microbes, and then go through a category for each of them. Which of them have cell walls? If they do, what are they made of? Which are prokaryote, eukaryote, relative sizes, dna or rna, and then after going through 10-12 columns, ill take notes on what make each unique.

As for whether invitational are harder then regionals, it depends on the invitationals. Probably 90% of the time they are harder because only the teams that are dedicated will go to invitationals, but if a school at an invitational writes a test and its really really easy, chances are that regionals will be sliiiiightly more difficult. Example: at MIT invitational no coaches write the tests, only national coordinators and scioly graduates that know what they are doing. The tests at MIT will be much better than the ones at regionals. At another invitational, say Boca Jr Scott South West North Secondary High Middle Kansas Prairie school invitational, where the 10 teams going have never spent more than 5 hours on scioly, it would be safe to assume the tests will be easier then regionals. Hope this helps!

esha wrote:hi,
does anyone know where i can find a good source on comparing and contrasting all the different types of microbes? like obviously their purposes and appearance are different but is there anything else?
also, invitationals are usually harder than regionals.... right?

Just a tip: find an AP Bio teacher in your school and ask them to borrow a class textbook, they tend to have tons of them lying around
then don't be like me and return it before 300+ days have passed and the SciOly season has been over for months

The AP Bio book (Campbell's) is good for general biology topics, but it goes nowhere near in depth enough for microbe mission at most levels. Just to give an idea, our coach is getting a degree in microbiology and we're using his old textbooks to study for the event, as well as checking out textbooks from a university library on virology, fungi, pathogenic bacteria, and more in depth microbiology. AP Bio is a good place to start but it's nowhere near what you're going to have to learn for the event