Usually, when you hear the words “zombie” and “virus” together, it’s about a movie where something bad goes down somewhere cheap to film. In this case, though, it’s about a zombie microbe killing other microbes, thanks to silver.
Yes, we know, silver is usually what you use to ward away evil. Turns out, that’s scientifically accurate: Silver compounds kill pretty much any microbe dead, while it’s hard for humans to overdose on it. Considering one of the symptoms is becoming a Smurf, it’s pretty easy to spot. And since it’s not an antibiotic and building up a resistance to it is impossible, silver’s popular for bumping off nasty microbes.
It turns out, the dead microbes kill other microbes. As an experiment, researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem exposed pseudomonas aeruginosa to silver, which sucks up a lot of it. Then they added it to a solution of the living bacteria, and the dead microbes tried to achieve equilibrium in the solution. The result? The microbial version of the Boomer in Left 4 Dead, as they exploded and sprayed silver particles everywhere, killing their fellow bacteria.
This is actually good news, beyond being funny; it means that anything killed by silver can continue to kill other pathogens as it sits there, all glittery. Okay, so it’s not quite as active as we like, but don’t worry: Science is working on it.
(Source: Popular Science)