Sentence examples for bacteria pick from inspiring English sources

"If you expose a baby to [the] vaginal fluids of his or her mom, bacteria pick up in different places and bloom," Dominguez-Bello says.

That bacterial virulence factor genes can be found in unexpected organisms or in environments physically distinct or distant from disease outbreaks suggests that bacteria pick up genetic material by horizontal gene transfer more readily than had been thought, and that the mechanisms for geographical spread are potentially very complex.

The clones that had originally harbored bacteria picked up the bugs again, indicating that they were collecting bacteria.

"Multidrug-resistant typhoid has been coming and going since the 1970s and is caused by the bacteria picking up novel antimicrobial resistance genes, which are usually lost when we switch to a new drug.

Kathryn Holt, a scientist at the University of Melbourne in Australia who worked on the study, said multidrug resistant typhoid is caused by the bacteria picking up new resistance genes as disease strains mix and pass from person to person.

Once a bacterium picks up such a gene, it enjoys a great selective advantage because it can grow in the presence of the antibiotic.

Scientists have thought that gut bacteria might pick up genes from other microbes, a process known as lateral gene transfer, "but there hasn't been an example this clear before," says Ruth Ley, a microbiologist at Cornell University.

Still, the qualities that make it easier for certain bacteria to pick up the resistance gene, and other genes that enhance that one's performance, are unclear, the researchers report in the 1 March issue of Lancet Infectious Diseases.

"This is a proof of principle that if you expose a baby to vaginal fluids, the vaginal bacteria will pick up and bloom in different sites of the baby's body," said Maria Dominguez-Bello, a microbiologist at NYU and the lead author of the study.

Bacteria can pick up dozens of toxin or antibiotic resistance genes, which lead to multiresistant phenotypes against antibiotics.

The gut bacteria apparently picked up the gene from marine bacteria that live on this red algae seaweed in the ocean.