Allies and Enemies: How the World Depends on Bacteria

Allies and Enemies

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Allies and Enemies

How the World Depends on Bacteria

Anne Maczulak

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Printed in the United States of America

First Printing July 2010

ISBN-10: 0-13-701546-1

ISBN-13: 978-0-13-701546-7

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Maczulak, Anne E. (Anne Elizabeth), 1954—

Allies and enemies : how the world depends on bacteria / Anne E. Maczulak.

p. ; cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-13-701546-7 (hardback : alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 0-13-701546-1 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Bacteria—Popular works. 2.
Microbial biotechnology—Popular works. 3. Microbiology—Popular works. I. Title.

[DNLM: 1. Bacteria. 2. Bacterial Physiological Phenomena. 3. Bacteriology—history. QW

50 M177a 2010]

QR56.M26 2010

579.3—dc22

2010006589

Contents

Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii

About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Chapter 1

Why the world needs bacteria . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Tricks in bacterial survival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Bacterial communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Under the microscope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

The size of life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

The bacteria of the human body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

The origins of our bacteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

One planet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Chapter 2

Bacteria in history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

The ancients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

The legacy of bacterial pathogens . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

The plague . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Microbiologists save the day . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

Unheralded heroes of bacteriology . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

On the front . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Chapter 3

“Humans defeat germs!”(but not for long) . . . 63

What is an antibiotic? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

Inventing drugs is like making sausage . . . . . . . . . 68

Mutant wars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Bacteria share their DNA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

The opportunists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

vi

allies and enemies

Chapter 4

Bacteria in popular culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Bacteria and art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Bacteria in the performing arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Friends and enemies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

Do bacteria devour art? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

Chapter 5

An entire industry from a single cell . . . . . . . . 99

E. coli . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

The power of cloning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

A chain reaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

Bacteria on the street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

Anthrax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

Why we will always need bacteria . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Chapter 6

The invisible universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

Versatility begets diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

Cyanobacteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128

Bacterial protein factories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

How to build an ecosystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

Feedback and ecosystem maintenance . . . . . . . . 138

Macrobiology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

Chapter 7

Climate, bacteria, and a barrel of oil . . . . . . 145

The story of oil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Bacteria power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149

How is a cow like a cockroach? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150

Microscopic power plants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

The waste problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Bacteria on Mars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160

Shaping the planet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

Epilogue

How microbiologists grow bacteria . . . . . . . . 165

Serial dilution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Counting bacteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

Logarithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

contents

vii

Anaerobic microbiology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

Aseptic technique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170

Appendix

Resources for learning more

about bacteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Internet resources on bacteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Book resources on bacteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173

Classic reading on bacteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174

Bacteria rule references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

Acknowledgments

I became a microbiologist in Burk A. Dehority’s laboratory in 1978
studying anaerobes in cattle, sheep, and horses. From that point on I have met or worked with some of the most respected researchers in the fields of anaerobic, environmental, and water microbiology. I’m sure they have forgotten more microbiology than I ever learned, but we collectively must admit that bacteria still hold a vast world of unknowns. I thank all of my professors of microbiology at the Ohio State University and the University of Kentucky.

For this book I owe thanks to Bonnie DeClark, Dana Johnson,

Priscilla Royal, Sheldon Siegel, Meg Stiefvater, and Janet Wallace for their advice on chapter content. Special gratitude is due Dennis Kunkel and Richard Danielson who always seem to offer encouragement when it is needed the most. Thanks are due to Amanda Moran and Kirk Jensen for their valuable guidance, and to Jodie Rhodes for tireless encouragement and support.

About the Author

Anne Maczulak
grew up in Watchung, New Jersey, with a plan to become either a writer or a biologist. She completed undergraduate and

master’s studies in animal nutrition at The Ohio State University, her doctorate nutrition and microbiology from the University of Kentucky, and conducted postdoctoral studies at the New York State Department of Health. She also holds an MBA from Golden Gate University in San Francisco.

Anne began her training as a microbiologist studying the bacteria and protozoa of human and animal digestive tracts. She is one of a relatively small group of microbiologists who were trained in the Hungate method of culturing anaerobic microbes, meaning microbes that cannot live if exposed to oxygen. In industry, Anne worked in microbiology laboratories at Fortune 500 companies, developing anti-dandruff shampoos, deodorants, water purifiers, drain openers, septic tank cleaners, and disinfectants—all products that relate to the world of microbes. She conducted research in the University of California-San Francisco’s dermatology group, testing wound-healing medications, antimicrobial soaps, and foot fungus treatments.

In graduate school, other students and a few professors had seemed

nonplussed when Anne filled her elective schedule with literature courses. Anne was equally surprised to learn that so many of her peers in science found pursuit of the arts to be folly. In 1992, with more than a decade of “growing bugs” on her resume, she packed up and drove from the east coast to California to begin a new career as a writer while keeping microbiology her day job. And yes, it was possible to be both a writer and a scientist.

While toiling evenings on a mystery novel set in a microbiology lab,

Anne continued working on various laboratory projects intended either

to utilize good microbes or eliminate deadly ones. A decade later, Anne began her career as an independent consultant and has successfully blended writing with biology. Although the mystery novel never made it off the ground, Anne has since publ ished ten books on microbes and allies and enemies environmental science. She focuses on making highly technical subjects easy to understand. From her unique perspective, Anne inspires her audiences into wanting to know more about microbes, and perhaps even
like them.

Introduction

In the mid-1600s, Europe’s population had been decimated by three

centuries of bubonic plagues. The deadliest had been the Black Death, killing one-third of the population between 1347 and 1352.

Between each epidemic European cities repopulated and rebuilt

their commerce. In Amsterdam, the Dutch had ceded dominance of

the seas to England but retained a central role in European finance

and the trade routes. Glass, textiles, and spices moved by the ton through the Netherlands’ ports.

After apprenticing in Amsterdam, cloth merchant Antoni van

Leeuwenhoek returned to his birthplace Delft to start his own business and capitalize on the growing economy. Needing a way to assess
fabric quality and compete with established clothiers, van Leeuwenhoek experimented with glass lenses of various thicknesses to magnify individual threads. More than 75 years earlier, eyeglass makers Zacharias Janssen and his father, Hans, had put multiple lenses in sequence to amplify magnification and in doing so invented the first compound microscope. Van Leeuwenhoek used mainly single lenses,

but he formed them with precision, enabling him to observe the microscopic world as no one had before.

Van Leeuwenhoek continued tinkering with new microscope

assemblies and word spread of the clever new invention. More for hobby than for science, he studied various items from nature. Using a
magnification of 200 times, van Leeuwenhoek spied tiny objects moving about in rainwater, melted snow, and the plaque sampled from teeth. He described the microscopic spheres and rods in such detail that scientists reading his notes three centuries later would recognize them. Van Leeuwenhoek called the minute creatures “animalcules”
allies and enemies