Just before Christmas last year, this blog offered a gift to readers. That gift was a referral to the book, An Immense World, by Ed Yong. It was the most positive review I’ve ever given a book. But An Immense World was Yong’s second book, so I said I needed to go back and read his first book, which I have now done.
That book is I Contain Multitudes, which was published in 2016. It was a New York Times bestseller and is another astonishing book. The subject matter is enormously interesting, and the author is a masterful storyteller. Add this to my top recommendations.
The topic of I Contain Multitudes is stated in the subtitle, The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life. That states it pretty well. While we get plenty of information these days about bacteria, especially in our gut, probiotics, good germs and bad germs, ad nauseum. But this book really lays out the full story and it is quite a story.
The author starts with a timeline of life on Earth. He goes in reverse order, but I like to think of it in chronological order. The Earth is 4.54 billion years old, too long for us to comprehend. So, the author puts the entire 4.54 billion years into the form of one calendar year to make it understandable.
In March the first life emerges in the form of single-cells, too small for us to see. In October, multi-cellular organisms make their first appearance. In November, plants invade the land and most of the major animal groups appeared in the sea. By early December, flowers and mammals have evolved. On December 26th, the reign of the dinosaurs is wiped out by a meteor strike. On December 31st, at 11:30 pm, humans make their first appearance.
From March to October, half of the life of the Earth, microbes were the only living things on Earth. And these microbes reworked the planet in every way. Microbes continue to be everywhere. All animals and plants are based on DNA. The other domains are bacteria and archaea, both single-celled. It is thought that eukaryotes and microbes combined on one occasion, leading to all multi-cell organisms. This has happened only once in four billion years.
Each of us has our own microbiome, sculpted by our genes, where we’ve been, foods we’ve eaten, others we’ve touched and much more. And we leave a trail wherever we go: every one of us aerosolizes around 37 million microbes per hour.
It is a good thing we have plenty remaining, because life isn’t possible without many of the microbes on and in our bodies.
That’s true of every living thing on Earth. The book bristles with fascinating stories of life on Earth. One example: the amazing environment around the deep-sea hydrothermal vents in the ocean floors. There are clams, shrimp, and fish in this superhot, dark place. But the tube worms that live in the 400 degree Celsius water thrive despite having no digestive system. Microbes digest their food for them and supply everything they need. The microbes are ingesting sulfur, of all things, and converting it to food via chemosynthesis, rather than photosynthesis. And while scientists were amazed that life was possible in this harsh environment, they now think that this may have been where life started.
Closer to home, I learned there are many components of human mother’s milk that babies can’t digest. These components are present in the milk because the microbes in the baby, received from the mother, need these things for food.
While we inherit our DNA from our parents, and it never changes, bacteria aren’t so constrained. Bacteria exchange DNA all the time; they can even pick up new DNA from discarded remnants in the environment. This enables bacteria to evolve extraordinarily fast.
After all the amazing stories of nature, the end of the book deals with advances in synthetic biology. Microbiologists are now pursuing tailor-made microbes, based on each person’s needs. These would include a custom-made suite of microbes and the nutrients that the microbes need to live.
There is this and so much more in this amazing book. I think you will like it.
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