Marvellous microbes
9 Sep 2013 by Evoluted New Media
Readers of our print edition will have recieved the second of the LN Companion Series of supplements. In it, we take a look at microbiology – possibly the one of the most diverse disciplines in modern science. No real surprise perhaps, given the sheer amount of raw material that there is to work with.
Estimates as to the number of microbes, specifically bacteria, on the Earth vary wildly. Putting a number on this is of course inherently prone to inaccuracy, yet in the late 90s American microbiologist Professor William B. Whitman bravely attempted. He calculated the number to be an almost unimaginable five million trillion trillion – that's a five with 30 zeroes after it. Subsequent findings, for example that the ocean floor is home to 2.9×1029 single-celled organisms – only 8% of the previous estimate of 35.5×1029, have meant this figure has been amended, but still the numbers involved are incredible. The human body alone has 10-100 trillion microbes living on it – meaning there are at least ten times as many bacteria as human cells in the body.
And so microbial life pervades our own in the most intimate way possible – but as to our relationship with microbes? Well, it’s complicated…
On the one hand we are outnumbered and out gunned. We are their hosts, sometimes even their prey, causing us to suffer some of the most horrific and deadly diseases. It is us who appear to have the hallmarks of the dominated – providing shelter, food and even a means of distribution to these microscopic stowaways.
On the other, it is us who seem to gain the upper hand. Humanity has manipulated microbe biology to our own ends a countless number of times. Leavening our bread, brewing our beer, treating our waste…we utilise them as we might farm animals or machines even.
But to my mind one of the most important ways in which we have manipulated them is in the scientific process itself. Increasing our understanding of microbial biology – often out of necessity to beat disease – has put us in a position where we can take advantage of, and even change, it. This has rendered them tools to be used to express genes and produce proteins at our whim – often medicinal and often in industrial quantities. Yet we haven’t quite mastered the bacterial factory yet, we are however, getting closer.
