Angels Glow- Bacteria That Saved Civil Soliders

After 1862’s American Civil War Battle of Shiloh left 16,000 soldier’s dead and 3,000 soldier’s wounded.The medics was able to reach the wounded soldiers in Shiloh after two days. These wounded soldiers waited on the rainy, muddy Tennessee battlefield for two days. Some of the soldiers noticed that their wounds glowed in the darkness. Because the glowing wounds healed more quickly and cleanly, the mysterious force was termed "Angel's Glow."

In 2001, this "Angel's Glow" mystery was finally solved. Seventeen year old, Bill Martin was visiting Shiloh with his family, where he heard about the strange glow. His mother, microbiologist at the USDA Agricultural Research Service, had studied luminescent bacteria, and Martin wondered if similar bacteria might have been at work.

 With his friend Jon Curtis, Martin researched Photorhabdus luminescens(which is bioluminescent, meaning it gives off its own light), a type of bacteria gave off a light that was pale blue in color that lives in the guts of parasitic nematodes. When nematodes vomit up the glowing bacteria, Photorhabdus luminescens kills the other microbes living in the nematoad's host.

Normally,  Photorhabdus luminescens couldn't live in the human body since it dies at human body temperature. But Martin and Curtis, studying the historical records and the conditions in Shiloh, realized that the nighttime temperatures were low enough for the soldiers to develop hypothermia, allowing the bacteria to thrive in their bodies, kill off competing bacteria, and perhaps save the lives of their human hosts.

For solving this decades old mystery, Curtis and Martin won first place in the 2001 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.