Opportunistic Pathogenic Bacteria // Invisible Killers

Planetary Physiology

Bacteria are opportunistic pathogens and they will kill us if we threaten
their survival. They are also the original suicide bombers. When there is
a shortage of nutrients they make enzymes that seek out competitors for
the same nutrients and kill them but when their communities become too big
they produce toxins and kill themselves; our cells do the same thing and
we call it apoptosis (programmed cell death). They're also the most
successful organisms to ever live and they have been multiplying for
billions of years. They compose 80 to 90
    percent of the entire biomass on planet Earth.

Dr. Carl R. Woese, the scientist who discovered the "third branch of life"
called "Archaea" explains that bacterial life on Earth can sustain if
multicellular life disappeared but if single celled bacterial life should
disappear all life would cease. Dr. Woese has said that the microbial
world "established the biosphere and sustains it" where it has been
evolving for over 3.5 billion years.

"Humans are merely jerry-built embodiments of
      microbial engineering," Dr. Woese said.

"`IT'S clear to me that if you wiped all multicellular life forms off
the face of the earth, microbial life might shift a tiny bit,' said
Dr. Carl R. Woese, an evolutionary microbiologist who has devoted his
life to convincing people, including other scientists, that
microorganisms are in charge of nearly everything. `If microbial life
were to disappear, that would be it -- instant death for the planet.'"
(NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/gst/litesub_insert.html) Sandra
Blakeslee, "Microbial Life's Steadfast Champion" - October 15, 1996)

"Sitting in his cluttered office at the University of Illinois in
Urbana last week, Dr. Woese (pronounced ''woes'') put his feet up on
his desk and tried to explain the nature of his devotion to the
proposition that microorganisms dominate the globe."

"He rewrote the tree of life, paring it from five kingdoms to three
domains, with the human species sitting at the tip of one. And he
pioneered the application of Darwinian thought to microbiology -- a
marriage of disciplines that is revolutionizing the way scientists view
the world and how humans fit in." (Sandra Blakeslee)

Primordial bacteria lived without oxygen

"Dr. Woese said bacteria were responsible for all the oxygen on the
planet, via chloroplasts, which were once free-living bacteria and now
reside in plants. They recycle carbon with infinite variation,
regulate gases in the atmosphere and oversee mineral deposition. They
invented biochemistry." (Blakeslee)

In the late 90s NASA reported that a meteorite found in Antarctica which
was believed to have come from MARS contained evidence of microbial life.
And it has been theorized (Thomas Gold of Cornell University) that
microbial life may be found in the crust of other planets - not just on
Earth.

Not only are they the first life forms to inhabit the planet, they are us.
All living things are connected. All life interacts with each other,
referred to as an "entangled bank" by Darwin. The biosphere is
autopoietic; it is self-sustaining. Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan in What
is Life? says, "One of its vital `organs,' the atmosphere, is clearly
tended and nurtured." Human behavior is altering that balance and the
damage and subsequent risk to our species and many others hang in that
balance of the "global physiology."

Hank Roth