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Asked by anon-379616 to Zoe V, Stephanie F, Sharon M, Precious O, Louisse M, Karen A, Jordan K, John CC, Amy T on 11 Feb 2024.
Question: What is the role of the microorganisms
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Karen Adler answered on 11 Feb 2024:
That’s a huge question! There are all sorts of microorganisms – some are animals, some are plants, some are fungi, some are bacteria, and some are viruses!
Like us, what they want is just to survive and reproduce. Some just live a passive quiet life in the soil or water or air, doing just that. Some have friendly interactions, like the lichen you can find on trees and rocks – lichen isn’t an organism on it’s own, it is fungi and algae (microscopic single celled plant) living together. Sometimes, the only place these microorganisms can survive is inside a different organism: this can be bad, where the microorganisms grow at the expense of the other organism – like diseases; or, it can be good, where the microogranisms do something that benefits the other organism, and in turn gain the benefit of growing in a warm, food-rich place – like the bacteria in our gut (without them, we’d barely be able to digest our food, and we’d be very sick and weak).
Hopefully that helps – great question!
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John Clark-Corrigall answered on 16 Apr 2024:
Brilliant question! I agree with what Karen has said, route one they’re just trying to survive. The different environments microrganisms live in mean they have to live differently. Even in the cases of bacteria that live inside us, they might be helpful to human life in the gut but cause an infection when they leave there and get into our bladder. Some of the bacteria that live in extreme environments like thermal vents or in the desert can make things which we can use to defeat other bacteria. Understanding how different organisms work and products they make can allow us to do all sorts.
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