Microbes for life
1996; BMJ; Volume: 312; Issue: 7028 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1136/bmj.312.7028.449a
ISSN0959-8138
Autores Tópico(s)Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology
ResumoEveryone knows that microbes cause disease, and that Louis Pasteur was the first to scrutinise their nefarious activities. Yet few realise that astronomically greater populations of microorganisms are beneficial, and indeed essential, to life on earth. The name of Martinus Beijerinck, who demonstrated our total dependence on the microbial world, is correspondingly unfamiliar. Beijerinck worked in Delft, which became a Mecca for microbiologists from all over the world from 1885 until he retired in 1921. There he established that bacteria, living in nodules on the roots of legumes, fix nitrogen from the air. He studied organisms responsible for many other natural processes—including …
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