You are what you eat and same goes for bacteria
We are part of the Carbon Cycle
Many of us take soil for granted. Those who live in a city
rarely encounter soil except in artificial ways, yet soil microbes are essential
to maintain life as we know it on Earth. Scientists at the Argonne National
Laboratory(U of Chicago) have been studying how soil bacteria utilize various
forms of carbon.
The bacteria studied were anaerobic or non-oxygen using
bacteria. The anaerobic bacteria were provided with three different types of
carbon – glucose, lactate and acetate. Glucose is the most complex of the
three. The researchers found that when the soil bacteria were provided with
glucose as an energy source, they produced the most complex substances as by
products.
This is important because by producing more complex by
products a more complex community of microbes could live in the soil, adding
further break down products and even more complexity to the soil.
Complex plants, many of which provide food for humans need
complex soil to grow well. While artificial nutrients can be added to
artificially grown plants, the majority of food crops are grown in soil,
outside and dependent on the soil for their nutrition.
“We’ve
illustrated that as microorganisms alter their environment, their environment
then affects the type of microorganisms that are there and their activity.”
Argonne researcher
Farmers will be facing many
challenges as the Earth’s climate changes. Heat or lack of it affects microbial
growth. Some farmers have opted to use pesticides and herbicides on their
fields inadvertently affecting the microbial communities. With this latest
research a little more information is now available about these tiny engineers
of the carbon cycle.
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