Disease
Some carotenoids are produced by bacteria to protect themselves from oxidative immune attack. The golden pigment that gives some strains of S. aureus their name (aureusis = golden) is a carotenoid called staphyloxanthin. This carotenoid is a virulence factor with an antioxidant action that helps the microbe evade death by reactive oxygen species used by the host immune system.
Read more about this topic: Carotenoid
Famous quotes containing the word disease:
“His poor self,
A dedicated beggar to the air,
With his disease of all-shunned poverty,
Walks, like contempt, alone.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I prithee, daughter, do not make me mad.
I will not trouble thee, my child; farewell:
We’ll no more meet, no more see one another.
But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter—
Or rather a disease that’s in my flesh,
Which I must needs call mine.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)