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Check this out, great for teaching ...
http://www.microbiologyonline.org.uk/Take a peek down the microscope and explore further the secret world of microbes.
http://www.microbiologyonline.org.uk/students/microbe-passports-1
Did you know...
1
If you pick up a handful of garden soil you will be holding hundreds if not thousands of different kinds of microbes.
One single teaspoon of soil contains 1 billion bacteria & 120,000 fungi & 25,000 algae
2
Microbes have been around longer than anything else on Earth, longer even than dinosaurs.
If you imagine Earth began as a single day:
Microbes appeared at 5am
Dinosaurs appeared at 10pm
... and humans appeared seconds before midnight
3
There are 10 times more bacteria in the average human’s digestive system than there are cells in the entire body. This is approximately 1kg of bacteria.
4
There are more microbes on one person’s hand than there are entire people on the planet.
5
Microbes generate at least half the oxygen we breathe.
6
Most microbes do not cause disease - less than 5%.
7
Cattle belching and farting produce about 20% of the Earth’s methane.
8
A study found that 30% of all people didn't wash their hands after using a public bathroom—although 90% claimed they do. Just think what may be on their hands!
9
The toilet handle in most bathrooms at work has 400 times more germs than the toilet seat.
10
Botox - a deadly bacterial toxin is used in very small doses to remove wrinkles.
11
Some dentists recommend that a toothbrush should be kept at least 2 metres away from a toilet to avoid air-borne particles resulting from the flush – what a large bathroom!
12
Dr Winkle Weinberg, an infectious diseases expert, reckons that when we have a cold and cough the virus particles can travel at 320 kilometres an hour and up to 900 metres. That is faster than a passenger jet at takeoff!
13
The largest organism in the world when measured by area is the Honey Mushroom fungus. It covers a whopping 8.9km2 of a national forest in the USA.
14
According to Dr. Charles Gerba, a microbiologist in Arizona the bathroom is cleaner then the kitchen in the average house. He says you're safer making a sandwich on top of the toilet bowl than in the kitchen.
15
The dirtiest spots in the kitchen are dishcloths, cutting boards, sponges, and sink handles. Surprisingly, the floor is often cleaner than the sink!
1
If you pick up a handful of garden soil you will be holding hundreds if not thousands of different kinds of microbes.
One single teaspoon of soil contains 1 billion bacteria & 120,000 fungi & 25,000 algae
2
Microbes have been around longer than anything else on Earth, longer even than dinosaurs.
If you imagine Earth began as a single day:
Microbes appeared at 5am
Dinosaurs appeared at 10pm
... and humans appeared seconds before midnight
3
There are 10 times more bacteria in the average human’s digestive system than there are cells in the entire body. This is approximately 1kg of bacteria.
4
There are more microbes on one person’s hand than there are entire people on the planet.
5
Microbes generate at least half the oxygen we breathe.
6
Most microbes do not cause disease - less than 5%.
7
Cattle belching and farting produce about 20% of the Earth’s methane.
8
A study found that 30% of all people didn't wash their hands after using a public bathroom—although 90% claimed they do. Just think what may be on their hands!
9
The toilet handle in most bathrooms at work has 400 times more germs than the toilet seat.
10
Botox - a deadly bacterial toxin is used in very small doses to remove wrinkles.
11
Some dentists recommend that a toothbrush should be kept at least 2 metres away from a toilet to avoid air-borne particles resulting from the flush – what a large bathroom!
12
Dr Winkle Weinberg, an infectious diseases expert, reckons that when we have a cold and cough the virus particles can travel at 320 kilometres an hour and up to 900 metres. That is faster than a passenger jet at takeoff!
13
The largest organism in the world when measured by area is the Honey Mushroom fungus. It covers a whopping 8.9km2 of a national forest in the USA.
14
According to Dr. Charles Gerba, a microbiologist in Arizona the bathroom is cleaner then the kitchen in the average house. He says you're safer making a sandwich on top of the toilet bowl than in the kitchen.
15
The dirtiest spots in the kitchen are dishcloths, cutting boards, sponges, and sink handles. Surprisingly, the floor is often cleaner than the sink!
http://www.microbiologyonline.org.uk/students/fascinating-facts
6 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
I enjoy your posts as well.
good ones...
From Scientific American:
The sheer number and broader influence of these bugs may surprise you. For starters, microbes outnumber your body cells by 10 to 1. (The bacteria are much smaller than human cells, so their total weight is often estimated to be around two to five pounds.) In effect, we are each a walking superorganism, hosting our own unique microcommunity. No two individuals share the same makeup of microbes and their genes, not even identical twins. Nobel Prize winner Joshua Lederberg dubbed this inner ecosystem a microbiome, acknowledging its complexity and interconnectedness.
From The Economist:
A healthy adult human harbours some 100 trillion bacteria in his gut alone. That is ten times as many bacterial cells as he has cells descended from the sperm and egg of his parents. These bugs, moreover, are diverse. Egg and sperm provide about 23,000 different genes. The microbiome, as the body’s commensal bacteria are collectively known, is reckoned to have around 3m. Admittedly, many of those millions are variations on common themes, but equally many are not, and even the number of those that are adds something to the body’s genetic mix.
From The New Yorker:
We inherit every one of our genes, but we leave the womb without a single microbe. As we pass through our mother’s birth canal, we begin to attract entire colonies of bacteria. By the time a child can crawl, he has been blanketed by an enormous, unseen cloud of microorganisms—a hundred trillion or more. They are bacteria, mostly, but also viruses and fungi (including a variety of yeasts), and they come at us from all directions: other people, food, furniture, clothing, cars, buildings, trees, pets, even the air we breathe. They congregate in our digestive systems and our mouths, fill the space between our teeth, cover our skin, and line our throats. We are inhabited by as many as ten thousand bacterial species; these cells outnumber those which we consider our own by ten to one, and weigh, all told, about three pounds—the same as our brain. Together, they are referred to as our microbiome—and they play such a crucial role in our lives that scientists like Blaser have begun to reconsider what it means to be human.
From Richard Dawkin's The Ancestors Tale, a bacterium expounds:
Look at life from our perspective, and you eukaryotes will soon cease giving yourselves
such airs. You bipedal apes, you stump-tailed tree-shrews, you desiccated
lobe-fins, you vertebrated worms, you Hoxed-up sponges, you newcomers on the
block, you eukaryotes, you barely distinguishable congregations of a monotonously
narrow parish, you are little more than fancy froth on the surface of bacterial
life. Why, the very cells that build you are themselves colonies of bacteria,
replaying the same old tricks we bacteria discovered a billion years ago. We were
here before you arrived, and we shall be here after you are gone.
such airs. You bipedal apes, you stump-tailed tree-shrews, you desiccated
lobe-fins, you vertebrated worms, you Hoxed-up sponges, you newcomers on the
block, you eukaryotes, you barely distinguishable congregations of a monotonously
narrow parish, you are little more than fancy froth on the surface of bacterial
life. Why, the very cells that build you are themselves colonies of bacteria,
replaying the same old tricks we bacteria discovered a billion years ago. We were
here before you arrived, and we shall be here after you are gone.
