![]() ![]() coli to produce human-growth hormone, insulin, vitamins, and even the rennet used to make cheese. Every day pharmaceutical companies manipulate E. coli in biotechnology and microbiology labs around the world. There are also innumerable colonies of E. coli caused Pembroke residents last week to boil their water. And there are strains that make us terribly sick, like O157:H7, the bacteria that periodically show up in undercooked fast-food hamburgers or on cable news shows. There are strains that shield us from dangerous pathogens. There are the benign, sugar-eating colonizers of the guts of newborns. ![]() coli, Zimmer reminds us, is a diverse species. ![]() coli and the New Science of Life," "we have chronicled no other species so thoroughly."Į. "Aside from ourselves," contends acclaimed science writer Carl Zimmer in his superb new book, "Microcosm: E. It also happens to be the organism scientists most frequently use to explore the molecular foundations of life. It's shaped like a Cheeto and smells like a toilet. coli is a humble germ, thousands of times smaller than a human cell. Lurking down in that vast digestive backcountry inside each of us are as many as 30 strains of a bacterium known as Escherichia coli. For a 6-foot man, 7 million body lengths is around the distance between Boston and Myanmar. To a microbe, that's something like 7 million body lengths. If that doesn't make you feel a bit bloated, think about this: An adult human will have about 30 feet of intestine coiled inside her. Soon an immense bacterial ecosystem will have taken up residence in her gut, hundreds of different species competing for food in a dark, bubbling wilderness teeming with as many as 100 trillion microbes. Within a few days, millions of competing microorganisms will have colonized a newborn's intestines. They come from the birth canal, from the mother's breast milk, from the fingertips of nurses and the lips of happy relatives. Within minutes, microbes have started pouring in from every direction. coli and the New Science of LifeĪt birth, a baby's digestive system is a sterile, undiscovered continent. ![]()
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