Bill Bryson - Small World

The Chapter "Small World" is all about bacteria. Bacteria is everywhere even when you think it's gone. There is no point in trying to hide from bacteria, it's virtually everywhere. If you are in good health and averagely diligent about hygiene, you'll have about one trillion bacteria  on your skin alone. About a hundred thousand of them on every square centimeter of skin. There are trillions of more bacteria in your gut, noses ect.

We can create antibiotics and disinfectants, it's easy to think to ourselves that we have removed bacteria from existence. But bacteria will never go away, they will be in when the sun explodes are more. We couldn't survive a day without them. They process our wastes and make the usable again, like little natural recycling plants. They purify our water and keep our soils fertilized. Bacteria in our gut convert things we eat into useful sugars and other stuff.

Microbes, supply the greater part of the planet's breathable oxygen. Algae and other tiny organisms under the sea push out 150 billion kilograms of oxygen every year. There is so many of them that they can create a whole new generation in 10 minutes. If the bacteria have enough nutrient supply a single bacteria cell can create 280,000 billion individuals in a single day. About once every million divisions, they make a mutant. These mutations can have advantages, such as the ability to repel an attack of antibiotics. Bacteria share information, If a bacteria cell is immune to antibiotics it can share it to other cells.

They will thrive on almost anything you spill. Just give them a little moisture and they will bloom as if created from nothing. They will eat wood, glue and metals in hardened paints. Scientist in Australia found a microbe know as the Thiobacillus concretivorans which lived in radioactive metal barrels, slowly destroying them.

Fungi, the group that includes mushrooms, moulds, mildews, yeasts where nearly always treated as plants even though they do not photosynthesize. Instead they grow directly on their food source, which could be anything. Fungi will eat anything between your toes, things no plants do.

By Brandon