Happy microbe monday!

Comamonas testosteroni is a funny little guy with a funny little name. It's a bacteria of the Comamonas genus, though it was once called Psuedomonas testosteroni.

It has a lot of interesting things going on, mostly to do with metabolism. For one, it cannot metabolize any sugars except for gluconate and glycerol. It's pentose phosphate pathway is disrupted so it basically can't oxidize sugar. So sad!

Instead it can eat fatty acids, aromatics, random vits of gluconeogenesis byproduct, and the like. Also steroids. It also eats steroids. It can survive on testosterone as its only carbon source actually. It reaaaaally likes to eat androgens in general. Just like my boyfriend for real<3. Oh it also degrades estrogens

One of the big things about it is its ability to break down these chemicals means it can be used in some bioremediation processes. It loves to live in wastewater and can break down some harmful chemicals and even bits of certain types of plastic. It's not well studied but it is super cool! I love its strange little metabolism.

I think we should feed bacterias all our trashes, wastes, byproducts, etc. theyre hungry! and even when theyre not they love to cleave things apart teehee

Once again happy microbe monday!!! Remember that we are macroscopic guests of a microbial world.