Article by Dr David Lovell, ABC Online
Humans may be bigger, but microbes are faster … at evolving that is. But at least we can use maths, stats and heavy-duty computing to stay a step ahead, writes David Lovell.
Life is change. Life does not stand still — as any parent of a small child will attest.
Over their lifetimes, living things grow, develop and change. Beyond their lifetimes (if they reproduce and have offspring) their species changes. Their species evolves. And when their species evolves faster than ours, humans better watch out.
Microbes — the tiniest life forms, including bacteria and viruses — come in for a bad rap.
From the unfolding devastation of Ebola, to the sheer misery of Salmonella poisoning, we don’t think fondly of microbes. And it’s not just humans they can sicken and kill: foot and mouth disease, banana freckle, and wheat stem rust UG99 can devastate our livestock and crops.
Yet, as the scientists at the American Society for Microbiology say: “Without microbes, we couldn’t eat or breathe. Without us, they’d probably be just fine.”
David Lovell is director of the Australian Bioinformatics Network and will be speaking at BioInfoSummer 2014. David gratefully acknowledges input from Dr Kat Holt, Ms Harriet Dashnow and Ms Mari Ericksen in drafting this piece.
