Microbial Association

MICROBIAL ASSOCIATION, such a combination of various jointly living species of microbes when they, under the influence of their life conditions, help each other in assimilating food and perform their enzymatic work with greater energy than when they live separately. A striking example of association is the life of anaerobes together with aerobes in an environment containing free oxygen. The latter is avidly utilized by aerobes, and therefore, the more aerobes there are, the better conditions will be created for the reproduction of anaerobes. We see such an association also in putrefactive processes, where aerobic microbes prepare material for its more complete assimilation by anaerobes. Microbial association is extremely widespread in nature wherever the processes of assimilation and nitrogen cycle take place. The conversion of ammonia compounds into nitrogenous ones, and the latter into nitric ones, thanks to the participation of two different microbes succeeding each other in the work, also represents an example of associative work. In the animal organism, phenomena of microbial association occur particularly often. A whole group of microorganisms related to filterable viruses associates with other microbes. The filterable virus, multiplying, calls to life other microbes present right there, activating them. For example, the swine plague virus activates B. suipestifer. In animal pathology, various microbial associations are of great importance. Babes and Cornil cite the following combinations: 1st, when various microbes of the same species are present, for example, tubercle bacilli typus humanus and typus bovinus; 2nd, when various species of microbes are combined, such as the diphtheria bacillus and streptococcus, which are unequal in their pathogenicity; 3rd, when various species possess the same virulence, e.g., streptococci with diplococci in wound infections; 4th, a combination of septic species of microbes with other species, as for example, typhoid, plague, measles with streptococci; 5th, a combination of a pathogenic microbe with microbes that are usually harmless, as for example, the diphtheria microbe with anaerobic ones; 6th, a combination of bacteria with fungi and protozoan organisms; 7th, a combination of various protozoan microorganisms, as, e.g., in the combination of malaria tertiana with tropica. The indicated and other associations can be distributed in the organism quite variously: either the microbes multiply in one place and together give metastases to other organs, or one microbe is localized in one organ and another in a completely different one. The joint work of microbes can be expressed

either in simultaneous reproduction, then there is a mixed infection, or in sequential reproduction, then a secondary infection will result.

S. Zlatogorov.