We've got pork on the brain here this week at PopSci. Earlier today we told you about how cells from a pig's bladder helped a man regenerate part of his severed finger, and if you're a PPX player, you know we just rolled out an IPO regarding PETA's recent offering of a million dollar prize for anyone who can grow meat sans-animal in a lab, hoping to negate the necessity for livestock. However, it will probably be a while before anything created in the lab will rival the one food that we can't ever manage to stop thinking about, even for dessert—bacon.

As it turns out, pigs have been the inspiration for several other recent medical and technological innovations in the last few months.

Germophobes and OCDers may want to stop reading now, or at least seriously consider only continuing with a bottle of Purell on hand—for today, we’re talking about bacteria, those squirmy no-see-‘ems that densely cover just about every surface imaginable here on Earth, including your own skin. However much hypochondriacal hatred the mention of them can bring about, as with other quasi-oxymorons like “good cholesterol,” we’d be in a lot of trouble if it weren’t for bacteria.