vied to pin infectious diseases on particular microbes. In the century and a half since
their day, growing understanding of the microbial world fundamentally altered how
we see ourselves—simultaneously changing our views on the world of nature and
the nature of our world (Montgomery and Biklé 2016).
The hidden half of nature that makes up its microbial domain lay unknown until a
seventeenth-century Dutch draper indulged his passionate curiosity for making
rudimentary microscopes. More than a century later, Louis Pasteur’s nineteenthcentury discovery that microbes fermented beer and wine opened the door to
thinking that such small and inconsequential organisms could produce important,
tangible results. And the subsequent rise of germ theory cemented in modern minds
the popular perception of microbes as invisible foes, a view most recently reinforced
by the disruptive global impact of COVID-19.
But our view of microbes broadened substantially in the decades before the recent
pandemic as new technologies shed light on what particular ones did and how
communities of them interacted. A revelatory advance came through scientific
recognition and grounding of beneficial roles that microorganisms serve in relation
to higher life forms—on the importance of microbiomes in the health of plants and
people, for the well-being of our crops and ourselves. We’ve been learning how
inherently cryptic microbial ecosystems are just as complex as those making up the
natural world we can detect with our senses.
Too small to see and inhabiting realms often shielded from view, the microbial
world turns out to run differently from how we imagined. We’re only starting to
discern and translate microbial dramas that have long played out beneath our feet and
in the dankest depths of our bodies. Yet what we’re learning has the potential to
reshape key practices in agriculture and medicine (Montgomery and Biklé 2016).
For it has become clear that maintaining the fertility and productivity of the soil, as
well as the health of our own bodies, depends on the care and feeding of microbial
allies, something that, in turn, depends on what we eat and how we grow it—on how
we treat the land.
12.2 Key Advances
Much like the way discovery of plate tectonics transformed the earth sciences in the
twentieth century, several recent advances stand out in transforming our understanding of the microbial world. Recognition of the major role horizontal gene transfer
plays in microbial genetics revealed that microbes don’t play the game of life in the
way we’re familiar with from our perch atop the macroscopic world. That microbes
seem to swap genes the way we do stories means they play by different rules and
helps make them incredibly adaptive. Consider too how over the past half century it
generally took less than a decade or two for bacteria to start exhibiting resistance to
new antibiotics.
We simply can’t win an evolutionary arms race against organisms with a life span
measured in minutes. So we need to think differently about them, and use microbial
196
D. R. Montgomery
their day, growing understanding of the microbial world fundamentally altered how
we see ourselves—simultaneously changing our views on the world of nature and
the nature of our world (Montgomery and Biklé 2016).
The hidden half of nature that makes up its microbial domain lay unknown until a
seventeenth-century Dutch draper indulged his passionate curiosity for making
rudimentary microscopes. More than a century later, Louis Pasteur’s nineteenthcentury discovery that microbes fermented beer and wine opened the door to
thinking that such small and inconsequential organisms could produce important,
tangible results. And the subsequent rise of germ theory cemented in modern minds
the popular perception of microbes as invisible foes, a view most recently reinforced
by the disruptive global impact of COVID-19.
But our view of microbes broadened substantially in the decades before the recent
pandemic as new technologies shed light on what particular ones did and how
communities of them interacted. A revelatory advance came through scientific
recognition and grounding of beneficial roles that microorganisms serve in relation
to higher life forms—on the importance of microbiomes in the health of plants and
people, for the well-being of our crops and ourselves. We’ve been learning how
inherently cryptic microbial ecosystems are just as complex as those making up the
natural world we can detect with our senses.
Too small to see and inhabiting realms often shielded from view, the microbial
world turns out to run differently from how we imagined. We’re only starting to
discern and translate microbial dramas that have long played out beneath our feet and
in the dankest depths of our bodies. Yet what we’re learning has the potential to
reshape key practices in agriculture and medicine (Montgomery and Biklé 2016).
For it has become clear that maintaining the fertility and productivity of the soil, as
well as the health of our own bodies, depends on the care and feeding of microbial
allies, something that, in turn, depends on what we eat and how we grow it—on how
we treat the land.
12.2 Key Advances
Much like the way discovery of plate tectonics transformed the earth sciences in the
twentieth century, several recent advances stand out in transforming our understanding of the microbial world. Recognition of the major role horizontal gene transfer
plays in microbial genetics revealed that microbes don’t play the game of life in the
way we’re familiar with from our perch atop the macroscopic world. That microbes
seem to swap genes the way we do stories means they play by different rules and
helps make them incredibly adaptive. Consider too how over the past half century it
generally took less than a decade or two for bacteria to start exhibiting resistance to
new antibiotics.
We simply can’t win an evolutionary arms race against organisms with a life span
measured in minutes. So we need to think differently about them, and use microbial
196
D. R. Montgomery