When bacteria are killed by something like being cooked for example, what happens to their dead bodies?
In: Biology
They remain. The cells themselves might burst, degrade, or come apart into smaller bits depending on different conditions, but the components don’t go anywhere.
If you took a solution that was teeming with bacteria, and boiled it, you’d still have a soup of largely organic material–it just wouldn’t be *living*.
So if I boil a pot of water, how do I remove the dead body of bacteria? 🤔
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Fun fact, bacteria will roam around and pick up DNA from other lysed, dead, or damaged bacteria to gain whatever traits they had. So even if you kill most of the bacteria on your hands, a surface, etc (without rinsing it, i.e. hand sanitizer), the remaining ones will go and scoop up and copy any surviving DNA from the leftover parts. This is because bacteria have extra circles of DNA that they can trade with one another (called plasmids) to “learn” new ways to survive, compared to the spiral DNA found in people and animals that stays in our cells.
When bacteria are killed, their bodies break down into smaller parts. Other microorganisms then decompose these parts, recycling nutrients back into the environment.
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