All 25 Uses of
bacteria
in
Turtles All the Way Down
- I felt my stomach begin to work on the sandwich, and even over everybody's talking, I could hear it digesting, all the bacteria chewing the slime of peanut butter—the students inside of me eating at my internal cafeteria.
p. 3..2bacteria = living creatures so small it takes a microscope to see them
- Admittedly, I have some anxiety problems, but I would argue it isn't irrational to be concerned about the fact that you are a skin-encased bacterial colony.
p. 3..9bacterial = relating to living creatures so small it takes a microscope to see them
- Excessive abdominal noise is an uncommon, but not unprecedented, presenting symptom of infection with the bacteria Clostridium difficile, which can be fatal.
p. 4..8bacteria = a living creatures so small it takes a microscope to see it
- ...thinking about how cows literally could not survive if it weren't for the bacteria in their guts, and how that sort of means that cows do not exist as independent life-forms,
p. 42..6 *bacteria = living creatures so small it takes a microscope to see them
- I don't know, like, I'll be at the cafeteria and I'll start thinking about how, like, there are all these things living inside of me that eat my food for me, and how I sort of am them, in a way—like, I'm not a human person so much as this disgusting, teeming blob of bacteria, and there's not really any getting myself clean, you know, because the dirtiness goes all the way through me.
p. 87..8
- Which means that I have maybe, like, no more of a soul than the bacteria do.
p. 87..9
- But that's also how C. diff starts—your stomach hurts because a few bad bacteria have managed to take hold in your small intestine, and then your gut ruptures and seventy-two hours later you're dead.
p. 90..5
- My stomach really hurt now, like it was twisting in on itself, like the trillions of bacteria within me were making room for a new species in town, the one that would rip me apart from the inside out.
p. 91..5
- I thought about how the smell of your sweat isn't from sweat itself, but from the bacteria that eat it.
p. 105..7
- Couldn't get the redness and the swelling out of my mind, my skin responding to the invasion of parasitic bacteria.
p. 130..4
- The sting of the hand sanitizer was gone now, which meant the bacteria were back to breeding, spreading through my finger into the bloodstream.
p. 130..5
- I sat up, turned away from him, pulled out my phone, and searched, "do bacteria of people you kiss stay inside your body," and quickly scrolled through a couple pseudoscience results before getting to the one actual study done on the subject.
p. 153..4
- His bacteria would be in me forever, eighty million of them, breeding and growing and joining my bacteria and producing God knows what.
p. 153..6
- His bacteria would be in me forever, eighty million of them, breeding and growing and joining my bacteria and producing God knows what.
p. 153..7
- I wanted out—out of my body, out of my thoughts, out—but I was stuck inside of this thing, just like all the bacteria colonizing me.
p. 159..4
- Just how his tongue has its own particular microbiome and once he sticks his tongue in my mouth his bacteria become part of my microbiome for literally the rest of my life.
p. 164..2
- So it was with the tightening spiral of my thoughts: I thought about his bacteria being inside of me.
p. 180..7
- I thought about the probability that some percentage of said bacteria were malicious.
p. 180..8
- His bacteria are swimming in you.
p. 183..7
- It was saying that my bacteria were affecting my thinking—maybe not directly, but through the information they told my gut to send to my brain.
p. 209..9
- Sometimes you clear out the healthy bacteria and that's when C. diff comes in.
p. 210..7
- The combined weight of the earth's bacteria is 400 billion tons.
p. 225..6
- Thoughts are just a different kind of bacteria, colonizing you.
p. 227..6
- A thought appeared in my mind undeniable as the sun in a clear sky: He's going to want to put his bacteria in your mouth.
p. 251..1
- Who cares if he wants his bacteria in my mouth?
p. 251..6
Definition:
-
(bacteria) microorganisms (living creatures so small it takes a microscope to see them) that can both cause disease and be beneficial.
(Bacteria are different and larger than viruses.)editor's notes: A single bacteria is called a bacterium and consists of a single cell that reproduces by splitting. (This is unlike a virus that uses cells in the body to reproduce.)
Bacteria are found virtually everywhere. For example, there are typically 40 million bacterial cells in a gram of soil and a million bacterial cells in a milliliter of fresh water. Many bacteria reside on our skin and in our bodies. For example, bacteria in the stomach help animals digest food.