What Happens to Dead Bacteria?

[Dekan]

When an animal or plant dies, its dead body rots and smells bad. Humans get rid of the bad smell by burying the corpses.

 

What happens to the corpse of a bacterium when it dies?

 

There are so many bacteria on humans. And the bacteria have such short lives. They must be dying all the time, and leaving trillions of corpses all over us.

 

Where do the bacterial corpses go, do they just fall off us, or do they stay stuck on? Can they be smelled?

[CharonY]

Corpses smell due to the degradation products produced by bacteria and other microorganisms that are using the corpse as food.

So basically what you smell are bacteria.

 

If cells die, they tend to lyse, i.e. they burst and and the molecules just mix with their surroundings. So they do not leave corpses per se. There may be lipid residues (parts of their membrane) but they will usually be quickly utilized e.g. by other bacteria.

[rktpro]

Heard that dead bodies explode? The explosion is due to the decay of dead cells. When the decay is prolonged and complete, before the body is burnt or buried, it tends to burst due to action of lysosomes. Therefore, the action of lysosome on a single cell, can be understood from this explanation.

[Tus]

@rktpro--Didn't know of it.

[CharonY]

Well, because it is mostly nonsense. What may happen is that gases form in decaying bodies due to bacterial activities (mostly it is simply CO2). Lysosomes (which are organelles of eukaryotes, i.e. sub-cellular entities of your body) do not do that.

[rktpro]

Well, because it is mostly nonsense. What may happen is that gases form in decaying bodies due to bacterial activities (mostly it is simply CO2). Lysosomes (which are organelles of eukaryotes, i.e. sub-cellular entities of your body) do not do that.

 

Here

I read it in a newspaper, though. But for you I dig the internet a bit.

[Amitash]

When Bacteria are dead, their DNA is taken up by other bacteria by a process called as transformation. The remaining biomolecules are allowed to mix with the soil or other bacteria take it as food.

[CharonY]

Ack, no only a limited number of DNA is taken up an utilized that way (and not all bacteria are capable of it). The normal mode of action is to break down and utilize it. Same with corpses and basically anything organic. At the end of the chain bacteria are breaking it down.