Imagine for a moment that a spacefaring crew of extraterrestrials is approaching Earth. From a distance of a thousand miles, they see a globe dappled with clouds, water, land patchy with color; no unambiguous signs of life. They speculate about whether the planet is inhabited.
Articles with Bacteria
Photo by CDC on Unsplash
E. coli bacteria • Photo by Janice Haney Carr, National Escherichia, Shigella, Vibrio Reference Unit at CDC, USCDCP on Pixnio
Into the future with bacteria
It was inevitable that sooner or later we would ask bacteria to make electricity.
Photo by Arjun MJ on Unsplash
Using evolution against itself
It is a widely held misapprehension that evolution is “just a theory.”
“The Triumph of Death” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1562)
Plague’s cause had a job to do
For many of us of a certain age, the words “Black Death” evoke images from Ingmar Bergman’s film, “The Seventh Seal.”
Pediculus humanus capitis, the human head louse • Photo by Gilles San Martin (CC BY-SA 2.0)
From lousy to worse
If you are reading this at breakfast, you might want to put it aside until a less gastronomically sensitive moment.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis • CDC/ Dr. Ray Butler; Janice Carr (Public Domain)
Thus we behold a deadly beauty
On the evening of March 24, 1882, an unknown country doctor delivered one of the most important scientific lectures of all time to the Physiological Society of Berlin.
Photo by Martin Sanchez on Unsplash
Mother’s milk saves the world!
Hey, Tony baby, have I got a movie script for you.
Chroococcidiopsis thermalis, an extremophile bacteria • Image by T. Darienko (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Life will go on
Imagine the following experiment. Remove all visible life from planet Earth.
Propionibacterium • Image by CDC/Bobby Strong (Public Domain)
Our bodies, our microbes
From a microbe’s point of view, there is nothing more attractive than a newborn human infant. A pristine planet waiting to be colonized.
Photo by CDC on Unsplash
To the microbes, we’re all shmoos
Remember the shmoo?