MICROBES

Microbes

Microbes

Introduction

A microorganism or microbe is an organism, which is the part of extraterrestrial life. It is too small that human eye is not able to see it without a microscope. The soil is inhabited by a wide variety of microorganisms ranging in sizes from medium sized to even relatively large. The activities of the various groups of organisms are interconnected among themselves and with environmental conditions prevailing every time, verifying that the microbial population adjusts quickly to changing environmental conditions and those that are fundamentally those that determine the direction in which activity develops more of these populations of the species or the number of microorganisms present.

Discussion

The study of microbes is known as microbiology. Microbes include protists, fungi, bacteria or archaea, but not prions and viruses, which are usually classified as non-living objects. Generally microbes are unicellular or single celled, though some are microscopic, and some unicellular protists can be seen through normal human eye. Microbes are present everywhere especially on the places where there is a presence of liquid water on earth that include on the ocean floor, hot springs, and deep inside rocks within Earth's crust (Achenbach, 2007).

Microorganisms are everywhere, from the surface up to high altitudes, in all areas of continental environments from the surface to the abyssal depths. It is estimated that the total microbial mass is 25 times the total mass of animal life. Animals carry large microbial populations, for example, the human body is 10 billion to 100 billion cells of microorganisms. Thousands of known microorganisms, only a few cause disease. All animals and plants depend on chemical transformations performed by microorganisms in the environment. Microbes promote the recycling of matter in nature, transformed into more complex compounds simple. The degradation products are absorbed by plants, and the plants are subsequently ingested by the animals (Boswell, 2010). Finally, plants, animals and their droppings are deposited in the environment, and the process repeats. In the absence of microorganisms in organic matter would accumulate indefinitely.

With the start of the study of microorganisms, it became clear that the division of living things into two kingdoms (animals and plants) was insufficient. In 1866 it was suggested the creation of a third kingdom (protists), which included bacteria, algae, fungi and protozoa. This classification was satisfactory until further studies on the cellular ultra-structure showed two types of cells (prokaryotic and eukaryotic). In 1969 the classification was proposed based on cellular organization and how to get energy and food. The new classification divided living things into five kingdoms: Kingdom Plantae, Kingdom Animalia, Kingdom Fungi, Kingdom protista (microalgae and protozoa) and United Monera (bacteria and cyan bacteria).

Microbes are crucial to recycling of nutrient in ecosystems because they act as decomposers; moreover, it is noted that some microbes can also fix nitrogen; the reason of such is that they play vital part in the nitrogen cycle. Conversely, pathogenic microorganisms can overrun other organisms which serve as the cause of diseases that take the lives of several people each ...