In: Biology
1. Give an example of a microorganism showing Pathogenicity and an example of a microorganism showing high Virulence.
2. Some people may already be immune to a certain pathogen such that when they are exposed to that particular pathogen they don’t get sick. How does this observation affect Koch’s postulates? How might the postulates be modified to account for the existence people who already have immunity?
Ans- 1) example of microorganism showing pathogenicity are human papilomma virus, hepatitis, etc.
Example of microorganism showing high virulence are streptococcus pyrogens and vibrio cholerae.
Ans 2) This observation affects Koch's postulates as Koch's postulates state that the pathogen causing disease should be present in the host and should also be extracted from the host, then further be grown in a pure culture and reinserted into the host. But in this case when the organism already has an immunity towards the pathogen, there is no chance of finding traces of the pathogen as it will all be killed by the immune system and even if some traces are found which will be hrown in pure culture and then reinserted into the host organism, it would still cause no harm to the organism.
A modification in the postulates of Koch can be made for those who have a pre-immunity, which can be because of miscellaneous reasons such as transfer of the immune genes or pathogen prohibiting genes from parents to offspring or via diffferent methods. The postulate can be stated as: the pathogen will only harm such host organism who do not possess a pre-immunity towards the pathogen.