Monday, 30 April 2012
Saturday, 28 April 2012
Friday, 20 April 2012
Saturday, 7 April 2012
Monday, 26 March 2012
Microorganisms Are Useful To Other Living Things
GOOD MICROBES...
With such a variety of microscopic organisms, it's bound to happen that there are some that help the world. There will also be some that hurt the world. We will cover those in another section. We're going to cover a few of the good ones here.FIXING NITROGEN IN SOIL
There are bacteria that go through a process called fixing nitrogen. These bacteria, living in the roots of plants, actually help them absorb nitrogen from the surrounding soil. The nitrogen is very important for the growth of the plant, and these little bacteria give them an advantage for survival.
HELPING COWS EAT GRASS
As we said, not all protists are bad for the world. In the bacteria section we already told you about a species that lives in the digestive system in cows. These bacteria help cows break down the cellulose in plants. Similar bacteria live in all sorts of grazing animals, helping them survive off plant material. Many ecosystems are based on creatures that are called herbivores.
ANTIBIOTICS
Scientists have even discovered fungi that will help you battle bacterial diseases. So you get sick, the doctor looks at you and says you have a bacterial infection, maybe bronchitis. He prescribes an antibiotic to help you get better. Antibiotics are drugs designed to destroy bacteria by weakening their cell walls. When the bacterial cell walls are weak, your immune cells can go in and destroy the bacteria. Although there are many types now, one of the first antibiotics was called penicillin. It was developed from a fungus (a fungus named Penicillium found on an orange, to be exact).Different Types Of Microorganisms
The Littlest Organisms
Let's study the wee ones of the world known as the microbes or the microorganisms. If you spend your life studying them, you would be a microbiologist. These are the smallest of the small and the simplest of the simple. Some of them, like viruses, may not even be alive as we currently define life.
What is a Microbe?
What makes a microbe? We suppose you need a microscope to see them. That's about it. There is a huge variety of creatures in this section. They can work alone or in colonies. They can help you or hurt you. Most important fact is that they make up the largest number of living organisms on the planet. It helps to be that small. It's not millions, billions, or trillions. There are trillions of trillions of trillions of microbes around the Earth. Maybe more.Calling all Microscopes
As with all of science, discovery in biology is a huge thing. While microbes like bacteria, fungi, some algae, and protozoa have always existed, scientists did not always know they were there. They may have seen a mushroom here or there, but there were hundreds of thousands of species to be discovered.
It took one invention to change the way we see the world of microbes - the microscope. In 1673, Anton von Leeuwenhoek put a couple of lenses
together and was able to see a completely new world. He made the first
microscope. It wasn't that impressive, but it started a whole history of
exploration. More important to us, scientists were eventually able to
discover the cause and cure of many diseases.
Too Many to Count, Too Small to Find
We'll give the big overview on the variety of microorganisms here. There is no simple explanation of a microbe besides the fact that they are small. The list goes on. Just remember that there is a lot of variety going on here.They can be heterotrophic or autotrophic. These two terms mean they either eat other things (hetero) or make food for themselves (auto). Think about it this way: plants are autotrophic and animals are heterotrophic.
They can be solitary or colonial. A protozoan like an amoeba might spend its whole life alone, cruising through the water. Others, like fungi, work together in colonies to help each other survive.
They can reproduce sexually or asexually. Sometimes the DNA of two microbes mixes and a new one is created (sexual reproduction). Sometimes a microbe splits into two identical pieces by itself (asexual reproduction).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)