Gut feeling series

We can find microorganisms everywhere on Earth. Even the places our species deem extremely inhabitable for life, you will be surprised to find some microorganisms there (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmicb.2019.00780/full). They are everywhere and they can adapt with the changing environment very well. Microorganisms make the Earth and the very ecosystem we live in healthy but some of them – ONLY 1% OR LESS – can make us, animals, and plants sick. Though, the poor microorganisms continuously get bad and unjust press. In lots of media articles and news, they may have been dubbed as “germs”, “bugs”, or even “superbugs”. Resultedly, a lot of society continues to live in fear of microorganisms, while the good and neutral microorganisms that are critical in the ecosystem as they are keeping us, animals, and our environment healthy may have been facing some unfair treatments decided by our behaviors.

Let’s dig deeper to better understand microorganisms and their roles so that they deserve our respect and appreciation.

If we look at all these “big” words in biology, we will always see one thing in common. How easy it is trying to understand the meaning and concepts in biology’s scientific jargons. Take “microorganism” as an example, when we break this work down to its origin “micro + organism” and apply the meaning of the origin root of words to them then we have “micro = tiny” and “organism = living creature”. So, microorganisms are literally tiny living creatures. Microorganisms or microbes can live as single cells or in a community context that we have come to know as biofilms (complex layers of different/same bacterial types). Microorganisms include bacteria, archaea, fungi (molds), viruses (not technically but that’s another story to explore later), and protists. 

Microorganisms help the ecosystem to stay in balance in many ways (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7189961). Some of them preserve our foods for us; make fermented foods and beverages; recycle nutrients back into Earth, make medicine, help us with our balanced immune system, and do many more useful things on Earth. 

All in all, our species cannot live without microorganisms around us. We adapt together and in thai context too “Together we are better”.