Calling All Homo Sapiens

   Let’s celebrate World Microbiome Day this Sunday, June 27th! The microbiome is all the stuff we can't see that makes our life possible: the bacteria, fungi, viruses, etc. The microbes in the sea produce most of the oxygen we breathe and absorb as much carbon dioxide as plants do on land. A third of the food we consume is produced by microbes. New uses for microbes are being developed to produce fuel and combat pollution.

   Don't you love microbes? Of course the virus microbes have gotten a bad name in the last year thanks to the Coronavirus. But just as not all bacteria are bad, the same is true of viruses. Viruses have been important in the development of our DNA. Viruses were responsible during our evolution for the fact that our embryos develop in nice wombs rather than in eggshells. Viruses in our body fight off the bad bacteria and tame our sometimes over-aggressive immune system. Scientists are working on therapies that would use viruses to kill cancer cells.

   Now I'm making bacteria look bad. Bad bacteria can cause cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and tuberculosis. But the good bacteria in our body help digest our food, produce vitamins, and fight off the bad bacteria.

   I've always had a soft spot for bacteria because I thought we humans were directly descended from them. But new developments in science have muddied that view. We really don't know for sure where we came from. The earliest forms of life are the Archaea which resemble bacteria but have a different cell wall. Archaea came into being about 3.5 billion years ago, before there was oxygen on earth. There are lots of them but we don't see them because they hang around deep sea vents and salty environments.

   So the Archaea are our mothers and bacteria are our cousins. That's the thinking for now. We humans along with all the animals, plants, and fungi are members of the Eukaryotic domain. Unlike the archaea and bacteria, cells of all of us eukaryotes have nucleuses. Our domain broke off about 1.2 billion years ago. Some people are uncomfortable dealing with these gigantic numbers. I too sometimes read the Bible for it's explanations for the origin of good and evil in the world. Adam and Eve did not trouble themselves about bacteria. There was an ancient serpent in the garden to contend with and they themselves were only a week old.