Would extraterrestrial bacteria be dangerous to us?

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That one that they thought came from Mars was a hoax. It was actually terrestrial contamination.

Yep, that one

The bacteria on Earth has co evolved with other bacteria and microbes on Earth. So there is balance. Natural selection will have created this balance. What I am suggesting is an alien strain could arrive that Earth bound bacteria could not compete with. If this happened it could multiply beyond what is in the balance.

It may be unlikely and as far as we know it has never happened. But I'm sure you can imagine the scenario.

In Britain the North American grey squiral was introduced a few centuries ago. It has since replaced the native red squiral in most areas of England. This is an example of what I am talking about.

Obviously, an alien strain of bacteria could arrive with the capability of outcompeting Earth bacteria, but I think that this is very unlikely. For it to happen, the alien world and life upon it that they came from would just about have to be uncannily Earth-like.

Even thought they might use DNA (or a similar mechanism), the proteins encoded in the DNA would not likely be the same as proteins encoded in the DNA of organisms on Earth. It doesn't seem likely that their basic makeup would be such that they would be especially adept at exploiting Earth's particular environment as a basis to expand.

What are the odds that we could arrive on an alien planet and be able to sit down and eat dinner with the aliens without having major problems with their foods?

Two chances: slim and none.

Look what happens to gringos who drink tap water in Mexico.

ruveyn

Consider what happened in Mexico when the conquistadors brought small pox to the place. Apparently there was no small pox virus in mexico prior to the coming of the Spaniards. As a result the native population never developed an immunity or partial immunity to small pox or one of its less lethal mutations (viz. cow pox). So when the natives contracted the disease it was much more lethal to them than it was to any group of Europeans at the time.

The native never co-evolved with the disease and it killed them in very large numbers.

ruveyn

Extraterrestrial life forms don't necessarily need to be carbon based or even be immediately recognizable as life forms as per our definitions.

But even if extraterrestrial microorganisms haven't evolved alongside us, they could potentially still be dangerous. For instance if they are somehow able to dissolve our proteins by consuming specific chemical elements or compounds in their vincinity.

Except here you had a bacteria that infected humans in one location that was then inadvertently transported to another place where it then infected humans at the new location. I would expect that any alien bacteria that infected humans living on the alien planet would also infect humans on Earth.

I see no more reason why an alien bacteria that infects aliens on an alien planet would also infect humans on Earth than why an Earth bacteria that infects strawberries would also infect humans.

You are a fourth cousin by two removes from a strawberry. We are all DNA related.

Look at your relatives, the trees. Are they blooming idiots or are we?

ruveyn

I think my reading of the OP was whether ET bacteria would be a threat to us, regardless of whether it infected us.

A threat could be indirect. A bacteria could multiply quickly in a new environment where there are no other life forms that can keep it at bay. So this would pose a threat. And let us not forget that an infection is the name given to a situation where bacteria has taken hold within a body and the immune system is triggered to fight it. But death could occur if the bacteria takes hold and multiplies without any resistance from an immune system that has no experience to fight it perhaps.

But if we take the meaning of the OP as: would our immune system be able to fight alien bacteria? Then the answer would presumably be no.

Either way it would be a threat.

I think others are looking at the OP as saying: would an alien virus threaten us? Then the answer would be very unlikely as it would have no experience of our body cells and so would not be able to take over their function and replicate itself.

But a bacteria is different, and needs no host to multiply, only warmth, moisture, and light, of which there is an abundance on Earth.

I don't know about others, but I was specifically limiting my responses to bacteria because that is what was asked.

I think you characterize bacteria far too tightly. The range of bacteria on Earth is enormous and any specific bacteria generally does not inhabit a wide variety of inhabits. There are plant bacteria. There are beneficial bacteria that live in the guts of humans and animals. There are bacteria that live at undersea vents.

But the trick is the word "could". Obviously, there could be some kind of alien bacteria that might be able to thrive on Earth. And obviously, there could be some kind of alien bacteria that could not thrive on Earth. They would need to find a habitat here that would match to some degree the habitat of the their alien home.

Yes because Earth bacteria evolved here and so there is balance, which I spoke of earlier. But an alien form of bacteria may multiply relentlessly across the globe because it didn't evolve here and so had not 'learnt' its balance.

That last bit is completely unscientific. How can bacteria learn their balance? They don't.

The fact is that bacteria evolve to take advantage of particular habitats. What you are describing is a bacteria that takes advantage of all habitats. There is no reason to suspect that to be possible. For an alien bacteria to be able to "mulitply relentlessly across the globe", it would just about have to have evolved in an alien world that would be very much like Earth.

Well I put 'learnt' in quote marks for want of a better term. Natural selection appears to 'learn' a type of balance in the natural world, so the bacteria of Earth has achieved a balance.

If there was an alien planet very much like Earth then it is reasonable to speculate that bacteria would be living there. It is likely that life would develop on any planet that was in its 'goldilocks' zone around its parent sun if it had water.

Think about a cage with rabbits. We drop a set number of carrots into the cage every day. Now, if they multiply, each individual will get less carrot and they will eventually starve. If, however, there is a function (like a fox) that kills them off in a rate balanced to their multiplying rate, they will instead thrive. This little example tries to show that species are actually dependent on getting resistance.

They've been in use in the soviet states for decades with great effects. Its ridiculous 'western' medicine doesn't pick up this gem of knowledge simply because its 'red tech'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy

There was a documentary on this on Discovery channel a few years back. I remember being very impressed by the way this therapy was used as commonly as we use antibiotics. A person with an infection would be told by the doctor to first use salves, vitamins and other non-antibiotic medicines & treatments for a few days to see if the body would be able to fight it off.If it did not work they gave the person a weak antibiotic to see if it had any effect.

When that didn't work they sent the person to what was essentially an oversized pharmacy/clinic where they took a fluid or tissue sample to ID the bacteria and when it was ID's they would go to the back room, pull out the phage that had already been developed against it and applied it to the patient. Patient was sent home and told to check with his doctor every 24 hours.

Those treatments had an incredibly high success rate. The process was revealed to be so good that it not only prevented bacteria and viruses from evolving antibiotic resistance from their over-use (as it happened in the west) but also was a natural way of combating and immunizing in many cases, the population at large against the disease/bacteria/etc.Apparently the phage-weakened bacteria becomes easy prey for the immune system of the body so the phage therapy not only ends up cleaning the bacteria but also helping the immune system eliminate (and thus learning how to fight off) that infection type.