I think there is a lot of potential for Bacterial pathogens to be relevant in the RE universe and its kinda crazy that Spencer never did anything with them.

Does anybody else find it strange that Spencer never dabbled with bacteria in his quest for human evolution and godhood? I haven't been able to find any records of him or really anyone else working with bacteria. I don't think we've even seen a single example of an artificial bacterial pathogen in the whole series which is odd when bacteria already have a great track record of endosymbiosis in real life and have done wonders for eukaryote evolution.

Some dry context from the real world:

Modern eukaryotes are believed to have obtained their mitochondria (for oxygenic respiration) from proteobacteria and their cyanoplast (for photosynthesis) from cyanobacteria. The cyanobacterial symbiosis was likely the result of one cell engulfing another and is not relevant to the topic of using pathogens to drive evolution, but the story of how mitochondria became part of eukaryote history is different. The closest living relatives of mitochondria are parasitic bacteria, and it's likely that the ancestors of mitochondria were also parasitic bacteria that colonized eukaryotic cells.

For reasons we don't know, a endosymbiotic relationship arose on at least one occasion and that infected eukaryote could now use oxygen for respiration. This gave that eukaryote a massive advantage over uninfected competitors, which is why almost all eukaryotes today have mitochondria. This evolution was required to give rise to complex animal life. Would we even exist today without this random infection event? Maybe the eukaryotes could have evolved the oxygenic respiration pathways themselves, but this surely sped up the process.

Back to the subject:

This seems like the type of thing that Spencer was trying to accomplish with his research (if we believe that he wanted to further human evolution), but maybe it wasn't to the degree or rate that he wanted. This evolution isn't flashy or fast and the whole godhood part really depends on your perspective. Humans might not be gods relative to what we imagine gods to be, but compared to the humble archaea or bacterial colony, we might be gods already, why not try to recreate what has already worked in the past and see if there's another yet undiscovered layer to complex life?

This also seems like it has potential for a great business venture. Imagine using bacteria as vectors for gene therapy. You could do that with viruses too, but we never see it tried in-universe lol (dudes just inject virus strains and hope they get superpowers). It seems like it could be a lucrative business, maybe not to the degree that war is, but surely it's a much safer venture than selling B.O.W's to the highest bidder and hope the authorities don't come knocking on your door.

Maybe i am leaning too much on the recent humanitarian portrayal of Spencer, maybe it was just all about extending his own life and that is why he only worked with these volatile mutagenic viruses. Maybe he was so obsessed with the african stories of the progenitor virus that he never saw anything else as a worthy candidate for further research, who knows.

Anyway i think there is a lot of potential here for a future Resident Evil story. What do you think? (And sorry for what might seem like boring subject to some, i have a thing for evolutionary biology)