[yarg]

My favourite story about bioluminescence is "angel's glow" in the civil war.

A bioluminescent microbe colonised the wounds of civil war soldiers, beating out pathogens and preventing sepsis.

https://www.utmb.edu/mdnews/podcast/episode/glowing-wounds

[blincoln]

Unfortunately, that story is likely a hoax/urban legend.

https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/10/26/angels-glow-civil-war...

[pomian]

What a great link. Thankyou. There is still so much to learn from the microbiome. Working with contaminated sites, I have seen bacterial adaptations to the most l nastiest sites, almost always improving the toxicity of the soil. (There are rare exceptions.)

[yarg]

Thanks, but it really wasn't - it was just the least shit of the top five results for "civil war bioluminescence".

I'd much prefer a more scientific article, especially one that delves into the (let's say) caste system of the bacteria - where one of it's developmental forms is symbiotic with a nematode (?) worm, and the other colonises plant roots.

I'm guessing it was more than likely the plant root form (resident in forest soil) rather than the worm gut symbiote - I doubt they'd've ended up calling it "angel's glow" if the soldiers wounds had been wriggling.

The other thing that puts me off is that it's one of a general class of fawning article about high schoolers, when (for one reason or another) what the child did wasn't really that impressive.

In this case because her mother clearly did her homework for her.

Edit:

Plant roots: https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/aem.00891-20

Nematodes: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Devang-Upadhyay/publica...