Bacteria

Bacteria have been around for a long, long time, much longer than humans have been. In fact, they are the oldest life form on earth. They raise special concerns to scientists due to the fact that they can cause disease and also mutate to resist medicines. Plasmids pass DNA to one another changing the bacteria's structure, and making each bacterium very individualistic. These resisting strands that are popping up are sometimes untreatable by our antibiotics, causing major future concerns. They have survived a vast range of environments, such as extremes in hot and cold temperature, and extremes in high and low pressure. Only less than one percent of bacteria cause disease, and they can hold many other uses to today's society. For example, bacteria are used to get the stains out of a shirt.

Bacteria, a prokaryote, is the smallest free living organism on the planet; so small that they are the size of one millionth of a pinhead. They divide to reproduce, called binary fission, and can grow in extremely rapid rates. Humans are born bacteria free, but within hours, a newborn child is covered in microscopic bacteria.

Bacteria's ability to reproduce so quickly and efficiently has been used for many different reasons, good and bad, throughout the world. Saddam Hussein abused bacteria, anthrax in particular, for his biochemical warfare that led to the war in Iraq. Contrary to this, bacteria can also be used to heal. Doctors have found that if one uses a very little bit of the toxin produced by bacteria, it can be inserted into people's muscles to relax the muscle spasms for people who have diseases that cause their bodies to spasm. Sourdough bread, the famous food from California, is created by a bacterial process.

Perhaps one of the most famous and important uses of bacteria is the discovery by Alexander Fleming in 1928 in which he used bacteria from a mold to limit gangrene. This would have huge implications in World War II. Bacteria, although small and invisible to the naked eye, have implications on our world bigger than we could ever imagine.