Microbe: A living organism that spends it’s life too tiny to be seen with the naked eye.

The Disease

Tuberculosis, also known as TB or consumption, is a highly infectious disease that affects the lungs. It is spread through the air, when someone who has the disease coughs, sneezes, or when any other form of respiratory fluid is released. The symptoms of Tuberculosis are simple and easy to catch: a chronic cough that usually causes blood to come up, a severely high fever, sweating even when cold, and drastic weight loss.

Treatment is usually through antibacterial means, but scientists are finding that TB is becoming harder to cure that way. But it still seems to be the only hope to get rid of the TB. It’s also a long process that requires administration of many antibiotics.

Prevention methods include screening and immunization with the “bacillus Calmette-Guerin vaccine.”

The Microbe

The Microbe that causes TB is called the “Mycobacterium Tuberculosis.” It consists of a capsule shaped bacteria with a flagellum, pilli, plasmid, ribosomes, a plasma membrane, a nucleoid with circular DNA, a cell wall, and cytoplasm.

The bacteria itself was found in habitats abundant in soil and water, and orignally developed from a strain called Mycobacteria Bovis (originally found in cattle.) It developed into a strain strong enough to harm humans when milk was starting to become drinkable.

The microbe performs cellular respiration, is heterotrophic, and reproduces either sexually or asexually.