Examples of microbes in the following topics:
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- Measuring microbes presents challenges because they are very small, requiring indirect measures of microbes to understand them better.
- Microbes are broadly defined as organisms that are microscopic.
- Most microbes are around 1 micrometer in size.
- An estimate of the weight of an individual microbe can be made by estimating the number of microbes.
- Microbial growth is an important measure in understanding microbes.
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- Microbiology is the study of microbes.
- Even in comparison to animal cells, microbes tend to be smaller.
- Viruses are about 1/10th the size of other microbes such as bacteria.
- A typical microbe would be about 1/500th of a period.
- Recall the size of microbes in comparison to human cells and viruses
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- As microbes are very diverse so are the disciplines that deal with the many aspects of microbes and their role in human life.
- Evolutionary microbiology: The study of the evolution of microbes.
- Medical microbiology: The study of the pathogenic microbes and the role of microbes in human illness.
- As microbes inhabit virtually every environmental niche in and on the planet earth there are an incredibly diverse set of tools that are used to study microbes.
- As well owing to the importance of microbes for human life and the role microbes can play as human pathogens, it should be no surprise that so many scientific disciplines deal with microbes .
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- The extraordinary biological diversity among microbes reflects their ability to occupy every habitable environment on the planet.
- Additionally, while microbes are often free-living, many have intimate symbiotic relationships with other larger organisms.
- Like all extant organisms, microbes have evolved to thrive within a given environmental context.
- Therefore, microbes have adapted to fill every ecological niche on the planet.
- In addition to occupying a unique niche within an ecosystem, microbes are potentially sensitive to subtle environmental differences between adjacent areas.
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- A microbe or microorganism is a microscopic organism that comprises either a single cell (unicellular), cell clusters, or multicellular relatively complex organisms .
- Microbes also have an important place in most higher-order multicellular organisms as symbionts, and they are also exploited by people in biotechnology, both in traditional food and beverage preparation, and in modern technologies based on genetic engineering.
- However, pathogenic microbes are harmful, since they invade and grow within other organisms, causing diseases that kill humans, animals, and plants.
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- Microbes live in all parts of the biosphere where there is liquid water, including soil, hot springs, the ocean floor, acid lakes, deserts, geysers, rocks, and even the mammalian gut.
- By virtue of their omnipresence, microbes impact the entire biosphere; indeed, microbial metabolic processes (including nitrogen fixation, methane metabolism, and sulfur metabolism) collectively control global biogeochemical cycling.
- The ability of microbes to contribute substantially to the function of every ecosystem is a reflection their tremendous biological diversity .
- Microbes are vital to every ecosystem on Earth and are particularly important in zones where light cannot approach (that is, where photosynthesis cannot be the basic means to collect energy).
- The precise ecological niche of a microbe is primarily determined by the specific metabolic properties of that organism.
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- The gut flora in the human intestinal system has hundreds of species of microbes and over 100 trillion individual microbes; in comparison, the human body has around 10 trillion cells .
- Most of these microbes are bacterial and fungal.
- Antimicrobial agents which can kill beneficial gut flora can reduce the numbers of individual microbes or reduce the species of beneficial bacteria.
- Fortunately there are antimicrobial agents that specifically target pathogenic bacterial species, which opposed to broad-spectrum treatments can reduce harmful effects on beneficial microbes.
- In extreme cases microbes can be transplanted from a healthy individual to someone with whose symbiotic microbes have been compromised.
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- Microbes are ubiquitous on Earth and their diversity and abundance are determined by the biogeographical habitat they occupy.
- Microbes live in every kind of habitat (terrestrial, aquatic, atmospheric, or living host) and their presence invariably affects the environment in which they grow.
- Not every microbe can survive in all habitats, though.
- Each type of microbe has evolved to live within a narrow range of conditions.
- The beneficial effects of microbes derive from their metabolic activities in the environment, their associations with plants and animals, and from their use in food production and biotechnological processes.
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- A wide variety of chemicals called antimicrobial agents are available for controlling the growth of microbes.
- Disinfectants are chemical agents used on inanimate objects to lower the level of microbes present on the object.
- Antiseptics are chemicals used on living tissue to decrease the number of microbes present in that tissue.
- Describe the types of antimicrobial agents available for controlling the growth of microbes
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- Adaptive immunity is stimulated by exposure to infectious agents and increases in magnitude and defensive capabilities with each successive exposure to a particular microbe.
- The defining characteristics of adaptive immunity are specificity for distinct molecules and an ability to "remember" and respond more vigorously to repeated exposures to the same microbe.
- These are driven by different elements of the immune system and function to eliminate different types of microbes.
- Protective immunity against a microbe may be induced by the host's response to the microbe or by the transfer of antibodies or lymphocytes specific for the microbe.