Title
March of the microbes : sighting the unseen / John L. Ingraham.
ISBN
9780674035829 (alk. paper)
0674035828 (alk. paper)
Publication Details
Cambridge, Mass. : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, c2010.
Language
English
Description
x, 326 p. : ill., charts ; 22 cm.
Call Number
QR56 .I54 2010
Dewey Decimal Classification
616.9/041
Summary
Though nothing in the natural world would be quite the same without them, microbes go mostly unnoticed. They are the tiny, mighty force behind the pop in Champagne and the holes in Swiss cheese, the granite walls of Yosemite and the white cliffs of Dover, the workings of snowmaking machines, Botox, and gunpowder; and yet we tend to regard them as peripheral, disease-causing, food-spoiling troublemakers. In this book renowned microbiologist John Ingraham rescues these supremely important and ubiquitous microorganisms from their unwonted obscurity by showing us how we can, in fact, see them--and appreciate their vast and varied role in nature and our lives.
Note
Includes index.
The microbial landscape
Acquiring metabolic energy
Food and drink
Living together
Cycling nitrogen
Cycling sulfur
Cycling carbon
Hostile environments
Fungi, hostile and benign
Viruses
Felonious bacteria
Shapers of the planet
Closer to us
Survivors.
