The Highlander film series is about a race of immortal warriors who try to behead each other with swords, so they can steal the powers of their fallen rivals.

This is basically the same story but instead of badly accented Scotsmen with katanas, we have diarrhoea-causing bacteria with syringes. And the stolen powers, rather than moving into victors via weird blue lightning, shuffle across as DNA.

The protagonist of this story is Vibrio cholerae. It’s a comma-shaped bacterium with a whip-like tail. We know it best as the cause of cholera—a disease that spreads through contaminated water, and that makes people lose water through both ends. But V.cholerae is only an unfortunate passer-by in drinking supplies and human guts. Its true home