How Bizarre Microbes

One giant leap for zit-causing microbes

ODD ALLIES  Domesticated grapevines play host to the bacterium P. acnes, which relies on the plant for essential DNA repairs.

Anders Ljungberg/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

By Annette Heist

- More than 2 years ago

Around 7,000 years ago, a bacterium that lives on humans and causes acne leaped to a very different host: domesticated grapevines. Since then, an essential DNA-repair gene in the microbe, Propionibacterium acnes, has mutated and no longer functions.