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Plant species and organs are colonised by diverse bacterial communities, which fulfil important functions for their host. Plant-associated bacteria have a great potential in diverse areas of biotechnology, e.g. as biological control agents (BCAs) in plant protection. Although many of them have a positive interaction with their host plants, they can interact with other eukaryotic hosts like humans in a pathogenic way. This review presents an overview about these bacteria that have bivalent interactions with plant and human hosts. We discuss mechanisms of the interactions and their behaviour and ecology. Another important issue is to detect those potentially dangerous bacteria by reliable test systems, and to exclude them from biotechnological applications. The Caenorhabditis elegans slow killing assay is such a bioassay, which is presented and discussed with examples. Besides human health, effects on the environment, especially on structure and function of microbial communities, are discussed. Diverse studies show that BCA application resulted only in transient, short-term effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A definition of the term "opportunistic infection" is presented. It refers to infections with bacteria, viruses, fungi, or protozoa to which individuals with a normal immune system are not usually susceptible. That is, infections that are due to microbes that are not very infectious, but that can be so when the normal immune system is not properly functioning.

A definition of the term "AIDS" is presented. AIDS or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is the final stage of disease caused by infection with HIV, wherein the virus infection has severely affected the immune system, causing a depletion of CD+4 T-helper cells. The manifestation of typical diseases that characterize AIDS are caused by opportunistic infections, neurological manifestations, cachexia or certain tumors.