MicrobeWorld

Network de Traductores

Traductores principales y coordinadores

• Emilia Quesada Arroquia, Departamento de Microbiología. Facultad de Farmacia. Universidad de Granada. Granada
  
• Jon Trout, Vicerrectorado de Investigación y Política Científica. Universidad de Granada. Granada

Traductores

• Ricardo Amils Pibernat. Centro Biología Molecular "Severo Ochoa". Cantoblanco. Madrid.
  
• Juan Luis Barja Pérez. Departamento de Microbiología. Facultad de Biología. Santiago de Compostela. A Coruña.
  
• Maria Rita Ferrer Moreno. Departamento de Microbiología. Facultad de Farmacia. Universidad de Granada. Granada.
• Magdalena Martínez Cañamero, Departamento de Ciencias de la Salud, Facultad de Ciencias de la Salud, Universidad de Jaen
• Mariano J. Gacto Pérez. Departamento de Microbiología. Facultad de Biología, Universidad de Murcia. Murcia
  
• Ricardo Guerrero Moreno. Departamento de Microbiología. Universidad de Barcelona. Barcelona
  
• Mercè Piqueras Carrasco. International Microbiology. Barcelona.
  
• Carmina Rodríguez Fernández, Departamento de Microbiología II. Facultad de Farmacia. Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Madrid.
  
• Francisco Ruiz Berraquero, Departamento de Microbiología, Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad de Sevilla. Sevilla

About Jesse Noar

I'm a microbiology PhD student at North Carolina State University who finds microbes continually fascinating. I'm working on ways to see just how good for us bacteria can be, and in order to share my enthusiasm for discoveries made by others or myself, I created BacterioFiles.

Back in early 2009 when science podcasts first caught my interest, I looked around to see if I could find any up-to-date podcasts that were focused on microbiology. There were a few, but they mostly seemed to focus on the negative aspects of bacteria or viruses that cause disease. I wanted news about how important bacteria and other microbes are, in our bodies, in the environment, and even in our technology, as well as how interesting and diverse they can be. So my path was clear: I had to fill the niche.

That path led to the creation of BacterioFiles, the podcast for microbe lovers, dedicated to promoting the exploration of the mostly-invisible world that is all around us.

Sobre Catalina Dávila

Catalina Dávila es actualmente estudiante graduada en la Universidad de Puerto Rico.  Originaria de Colombia, es una microbióloga con experiencia de varios anos en la industria farmacéutica.  Catalina esta llevando a cabo estudios de investigación en el area de la calidad microbiológica de aguas recreacionales tropicales en el Laboratorio de Microbiologia Ambiental de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Rio Piedras.

Sobre Gary Toranzos

El Dr. Gary A. Toranzos ha llevado a cabo investigaciones sobre diferentes aspectos de la microbiologia ambiental por los ultimos 25 anos.  Profesor de Microbiologia en la Universidad de Puerto Rico, tambien es miembro de la Academia Americana de Microbiologia y Fellow Elegido de la Asociacion Americana para el Avance de la Ciencia (AAAS), y trabajo como Director de Programa en la Fundacion Nacional de Ciencia de EEUU (NSF).  Sus investigaciones se enfocan en la calidad microbiologica de las aguas potables y recreacionales asi como la ecologia de los microorganismos patogenicos de hidrotransmision en areas tropicales.  Nacido en Bolivia, tiene como su presente hogar la Isla de Puerto Rico.

About Dickson D. Despommier, Ph.D.

Dickson D. Despommier, Ph.D. is Professor of Public Health in Environmental Health Sciences and Microbiology at Columbia University Medical Center. He is a microbiologist/ecologist by training, and for 27 years conducted laboratory-based research on molecular aspects of intracellular parasitism. Dick also teaches Parasitic Diseases, Medical Ecology, and Ecology 101. These courses deal with parasitism and its effects on large segments of the poor that live in the tropics. Controlling soil-based transmission cycles of helminthes that cause significant health problems throughout the world is of prime importance to Dick. Since it is generally agreed agriculture is solely responsible for so much environmental disturbance and serves as the interface for the transmission of geohelminths, one area of his focus has been on how to raise food without further encroachment into natural ecosystems. He established The Vertical Farm as a theoretical construct to look at the possibility of agricultural sustainability within cities.  Sustainable urban life is now a major interest of Dick’s. Inventing new approaches to the raising of food within the confines of a large urban center is bound to be fraught with hidden pitfalls and caveats when starting out, particularly those of a technical and economic nature. However, he firmly believes that with enough input from multiple disciplines (e.g., industrial and soil microbiology, engineering, public health, policy making, urban planning, architecture, agronomy, plant genetics, economics), vertical farming could become a reality and thus replace most of what now passes for agriculture in many parts of the developed and under-developed world. If this were to come about, large tracts of land could then be returned to nature to do what it was supposed to do for us before we eliminated the hardwood forests of the eastern states. Restoring ecosystem services and functions is what Dick envisions as the charge to the next generation of public health professionals.

About Vincent Racaniello, Ph.D.

Vincent Racaniello, Ph.D. (aka profvrr) is Professor of Microbiology at Columbia University Medical Center. He has been studying viruses for over 30 years, starting in 1975, when he entered the Ph.D. program in Biomedical Sciences at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine of the City University of New York. Hius thesis research, in the laboratory of Dr. Peter Palese, was focussed on influenza viruses. In 1979 he joined the laboratory of Dr. David Baltimore at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for postdoctoral work on poliovirus. In 1982 Vincent joined the faculty  in the Department of Microbiology at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons in New York City. There he established a laboratory to study viruses, and to train other scientists to become virologists. Over the years his laboratory has studied a variety of viruses including poliovirus, echovirus, enterovirus 70, rhinovirus, and hepatitis C virus. As principal investigator of his laboratory, he oversees the research  that is carried out by Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows. He also teaches virology to graduate students, as well as medical, dental, and nursing students.

If you would like to learn about his work on viruses in more detail, please visit his website at Columbia University. For a different view, check out Vincent’s virology blog, or his Wikipedia page. You might also like to follow Vincent on Twitter, where he often provide links to interesting stories about viruses.

What is a Microbe?

Microbes are single-cell organisms so tiny that millions can fit into the eye of a needle.

They are the oldest form of life on earth. Microbe fossils date back more than 3.5 billion years to a time when the Earth was covered with oceans that regularly reached the boiling point, hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Without microbes, we couldn’t eat or breathe.

Without us, they’d probably be just fine.

Understanding microbes is vital to understanding the past and the future of ourselves and our planet.

Microbes <my-crobes> are everywhere. There are more of them on a person's hand than there are people on the entire planet!

Microbes are in the air we breathe, the ground we walk on, the food we eat—they're even inside us!

We couldn't digest food without them—animals couldn't, either. Without microbes, plants couldn't grow, garbage wouldn't decay and there would be a lot less oxygen to breathe.

In fact, without these invisible companions, our planet wouldn't survive as we know it!

Our Challenge: How are we going to solve the case of what a microbe is when they're so small they're invisible to us?

Microbe is a term for tiny creatures that individually are too small to be seen with the unaided eye. Microbes include bacteria (back-tear-ee-uh), archaea (are-key-uh), fungi (fun-jeye) and protists (pro-tists). You've probably heard of bacteria and fungi before. Archaea are bacteria-like creatures that have some traits not found in any true bacteria. Protists include primitive algae (al-gee), amoebas (ah-me-buhs), slime molds and protozoa (pro-toe-zoh-uh). We can also include viruses (vye-rus-is) as a major type of microbe, though there is a debate as to whether viruses can be considered living creatures or not.

To solve the case of what a microbe is, we have to use tools such as high-power microscopes. Let's zoom in on some microbes and see what a few of these strange creatures look like.

As you can see, microbes come in many varieties. They may live as individuals or cluster together in communities.

So how small are microbes?

Well, let's say we could enlarge an average virus, the smallest of all microbes, to the size of a baseball.

An average bacterium would then be the size of the pitcher's mound.

And just one of the millions of cells that make up your body would be the size of the ballpark!

Continue reading the other parts of this section of the site to find out more about the different types of microbes and what they do.

Illustrations © 1999 Eric S. MacDicken

About Merry Buckley, Ph.D.

I am a freelance science writer who specializes in translating cutting-edge science for the lay public. With a Ph.D. in science and extensive experience in writing, I find myself situated between the two cultures in our society, science and the humanities. I strive to bridge the two cultures by explaining and revealing the natural world in a clear, accessible style.

I have experience writing for print and radio productions, and my past projects include magazine feature articles, reports on the proceedings of scientific meetings, and newsletter articles for a scientific society. I am skilled at writing for both scientists and the lay public.

I often travel for my work, attending scientific meetings and working with prominent scientists to compile summaries of their discussions.

I earned my Ph.D. in environmental microbiology at Michigan State University in 2001, and I have been a full-time freelance science writer since 2004. I live in beautiful Ithaca, New York, home to Cornell University and Ithaca College.

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