The Emporia Gazette

May 28, 2012

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Every so often, I have written one of these columns about what is going on with bacteria, viruses, fungi and other microbe studies. My goal has been to keep you up-to-date on some of the new information we are learning. I have received some nice comments about those columns, so I am inclined to keep doing one periodically. I shall do one now, if I have my way.

You and I can eat grass, if we choose, but we will get nothing from it. Cows and other herbivores can get energy from grass. The difference is that the cows have microbes which can decompose grass into energy in their alimentary tracts, their guts, if I may use that term. We do not have these microbes.

Termites can live on wood. A recent article in Science tells us why. Termites also have a diversity of gut microbes, but they are different than in other organisms. They are so different that we have not been able to culture them and study them. Consequently, not much is known about them.

It has now been discovered, according to the Science article, that one of the microbes fixes oxygen from the atmosphere so that the termite can get its energy from eating wood. And, of course, eating wood is how termites thrive.

A very interesting article appeared in a recent Smithsonian magazine. Three new fungi have been found in Antarctica. They are living on, feasting on, the woody parts of three small buildings a hundred years old. It has long been known that some fungi utilize wood, but that happens in tropical and temperate areas of the world.

These fungi in Antarctica appear to be native to the region. Their DNA is not like that of any other known fungi. See how tough and marvelous these microbe organisms are? You would appreciate them more, if I had my way.

Let us jump from microbes in cold places to those in hot environments. I have read in Science that a thermophilic microbe has been found 208 kilometers down in a South African gold mine. It is in water. There is no sunlight and no oxygen. It can fix its own nitrogen and carbon. It is entirely encoded within a single genome.

Nothing else lives down there. It is a single species ecosystem, not suitable for anything else. Again I say, microbes are tough and marvelous organisms. And some of them are unique, too.

This may not sound very “microbey,” but it does have a relationship in my mind. A recent Science magazine number devoted a special section to the genetics of behavior. It discussed the genetically-controlled behavior of bees, other insects and various animals. Such information helps us understand how our own behavior works.

This particular section did not really go into microbe behavior. It does stimulate me, however, to mention how important our knowledge of microbe behavior is to understanding our own behavior. We have learned a good bit about behavior by studying microbes. And it is still going on.

As an example of this, genetic information from human gastric — that is stomach — bacteria is giving information about how languages have been distributed. This study, reported in Science, was done in the Pacific area, especially among Polynesians. I do not really understand what I read, but imagine studying gastric bacteria to get anthropological information about languages? Those microbes are really something.

I found an interesting bit in a recent Microbe journal. It has been found that the microbes in the human mouth are the same all over the world. That is a big surprise.

That does not mean that the mouth microbes — it is technically called “the “saliva microbiome” — are the same in all humans. Yours are probably different from mine. Or from your neighbor’s. But it does mean that some of the same mouth microbes can be found in people all over the world. Different food, different health, etc., but the mouth microbes are the same. I found that interesting and, I must say, unexpected.

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics and other drugs is increasing. It has been for years and is a big problem. Most antibiotics hit dividing cells. It has now been discovered that some bacteria can become dormant when an antibiotic is near. Then when the antibiotic is gone, they switch back to dividing rapidly and causing us trouble. We need to find out about the biochemistry of how they do this. An article in SCIENCE tells about some efforts in that direction.

There, then, I have shared with you some of the new information about microbes that I have recently found in my journals. I hope these microbe columns are of interest to most of you. I have had some comments that they are. They would be of interest to lots of you, if I had my way.