John L. Ingraham

Though nothing in the natural world would be quite the same without them, microbes go mostly unnoticed. They are the tiny, mighty force behind the pop in Champagne and the holes in Swiss cheese, the granite walls of Yosemite and the white cliffs of Dover, the workings of snowmaking machines, Botox, and gunpowder; and yet we tend to regard them as peripheral, disease-causing, food-spoiling troublemakers. In this book renowned microbiologist John Ingraham rescues these supremely important and ubiquitous microorganisms from their unwonted obscurity by showing us how we can, in fact, see them—and appreciate their vast and varied role in nature and our lives. Though we might not be able to see microbes firsthand, the consequences of their activities are readily apparent to our unaided senses. March of the Microbes shows us how to examine, study, and appreciate microbes in the manner of a birdwatcher, by making sightings of microbial activities and thereby identifying particular microbes as well as understanding what they do and how they do it. The sightings are as different as a smelly rock cod, a bottle of Chateau d’Yquem, a moment in the Salem witch trials, and white clouds over the ocean. Together they summarize the impact of microbes on our planet, its atmosphere, geology, weather, and other organisms including ourselves, to whom they dole out fatal illnesses and vital nutrients alike. In the end, Ingraham leaves us marveling at the power and persistence of microbes on our planet and gives credence to Louis Pasteur’s famous assertion that “microbes will have the last word.”

Sighting the Unseen

March of the Microbes

Roberto Kolter

Moselio Schaechter

Frederick Carl Neidhardt

Textbook for upper-division and graduate students in the biological and biochemical sciences introduces the properties of bacteria that have led to their success as colonizers of this planet. The major theme is the analysis of the molecular devices that have led to the ability of bacteria to grow rapidly in a variety of environments, to adapt quickly to changes in their surroundings, to withstand starvation and exposure to toxic agents, and to compete successfully with other organisms. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A Molecular Approach

Physiology of the Bacterial Cell

Ole Maal©ıe

Growth of the Bacterial Cell

By unlocking the evolutionary information contained in cells, biologists have been able to construct the Tree of Life and show that its three main stems are dominated by microbes. Plants and animals constitute a small upper branch in one stem. Soon we may know how life began over 3.5 billion years ago. John Ingraham tells this story of discovery.

John L. Ingraham

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