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How do microorganisms impact our well-being, sustain life and influence the future?
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- Role in Food Production: Making of Curd and Bread: Bacterium, Lactobacillus, promotes curd formation by converting milk.
- Bacteria and yeast aid in food fermentation, such as in idlis and dosa batter.
- Yeast’s carbon dioxide production during respiration is used in the baking industry.
- Commercial Use of Microorganisms: Crafting alcohol through fermentation: Microbes, especially yeast, aid in producing alcohol, wine, and acetic acid.
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- The process of converting sugar into alcohol using yeast is termed fermentation.
- Medicinal Use of Microorganisms: Healing power of antibiotics in health and agriculture: Antibiotics, sourced from microbes, combat disease-causing microbes.
- Examples: Streptomycin, tetracycline, erythromycin.
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- Antibiotics are also added to livestock feed to prevent microbial infections and control plant diseases.
- Vaccination in building immunity: Introducing dead or weakened microbes into a healthy body makes it produce antibodies against those microbes.
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- These antibodies provide protection against certain diseases.
- Vaccination can prevent diseases like cholera, tuberculosis, smallpox, and hepatitis.
- Increasing Soil Fertility and Cleaning the Environment: Certain bacteria can fix atmospheric nitrogen, enriching the soil and enhancing its fertility, these bacteria are known as biological nitrogen fixers.
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- Microbes assist in converting plant and food wastes into manure.
- Figure The Nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria (blue-green algae).
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Microorganisms Endangering Plants, Animals and Humans:
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- While many microorganisms are beneficial, several are harmful and cause diseases in humans, plants, and animals. These disease-causing entities are termed pathogens.
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Communicable diseases and their modes of transmission in humans
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- Pathogens can invade our systems via the air, water, food, or direct contact.
- Communicable Diseases in Human Health: Diseases that spread from an infected individual to a healthy one are termed communicable diseases.
- Examples: cholera, common cold, chicken pox, and tuberculosis.
- The common cold, for instance, spreads when an infected person sneezes, releasing virus-laden droplets into the air.
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Role of insects and animals in pathogen transmission:
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- Houseflies, which frequent garbage and excreta, can transfer pathogens to uncovered food.
- Female Anopheles mosquito carries the malaria parasite.
- Female Aedes mosquito is a carrier of the dengue virus.
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Practical measures to prevent Pathogen Transmission
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- Always cover food and avoid consuming exposed food items.
- Prevent water accumulation to stop mosquito breeding.
- Maintain clean and dry surroundings.
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Animal Diseases: What causes them?
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- Microbes also inflict diseases on animals.
- Anthrax affects both humans and cattle and is caused by a bacterium.
- The foot and mouth disease in cattle is due to a virus.
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[Image: Difference Between Virus and Bacteria]