i contain multitudes the microbes within us

elegans metamorphoses to its adult form only when it anchors to a biofilm. The worm Hydractinia reaches adulthood only upon contact with bacteria living on the shells of hermit crabs, while H. The mosquito Aedes aegypti can’t develop after larval stage without bacteria. The microbes are indispensable in their body development. The three symbionts cooperate to make nutrients like phenylalanine, one having the genes for some of the enzymes of the reaction, the other bacterium for others and the host doing the last part.Īfter a quick history of beneficial microbes on-lookers starting with 17th century Antony van Leuuwenhoeak, the first man to ever see bacteria thanks to his exceptional home-made microscopes, and finishing in the 20th century with the birth of metagenomics, Ed Yong demonstrates that many animals need bacteria not only to live, but also to form themselves.

Moranella is a small bacterium living in Tremblaya which is a bigger bacterium that itself lives inside the citrus mealybug. A dynasty of over 20 000 species of Braconid wasps inject their eggs in living caterpillars, along with viruses (called bracoviruses) to suppress the caterpillar’s immune system. The desert woodrat can eat the toxic creosote bush thanks to toxin-degrading bacteria they carry. Buchnera supplements aphids with aminoacids they couldn’t get from sap. The colorado potato beetle uses bacteria in its saliva to suppress the defenses in the plants it eats, much like the ant lion does thanks to bacteria in its saliva to paralyze its victims. The spiky pufferfish uses bacteria to make tetrodotoxin, a lethal substance to poison predators. Leafcutter ants carry antibiotic-producing microbes on their body and use them to disinfect the fungi they cultivate underground. We cannot fully understand the lives of animals without understanding our microbes and our symbioses with them.” From this thesis, Ed Yong, award-winning science writer published in Wired, the New York Times, the Guardian, Nature, New Scientist, Scientific American and more, broadens our understanding of the many roles bacteria play in the lives of many animals. This is the best book I’ve read about symbiosis in the animal kingdom, and presumably the best book there is on this topic.

I contain multitudes the microbes within us