A World Without Microbes

ABCT1D04 Introductory Life Science         Chan Chun Hei 14066912D

A World without Microbes

Let us imagine, what would happen in our planet when there is no microbes anymore?

It is easily noticed that without all microbes in world would be a complete absence of any kind of microbial disease, such as Ebola, the common cold and athlete’s foot. It will be welcomed initially, but how long would it prolonged?

The fact is if we live without microbes, our quality of life would become extremely bad.

Many organisms have to complete their diet with presence of bacterial and archaeal. For example, most ruminant such as cows, goats and sheep would starve without microbes digest cellulose (Croft et al, 2005). But, nowadays, advanced technology could solve these nutritional issues because all required dietary components for living organisms can be synthesized chemically, instead of the need for microbes.

However, the gnotobiotic condition lead to poor consequences to animals (Pasteur, 1885). They developed a poorly immune system and present reduced organ sizes such as heart, lung and liver.

Most biogeochemical cycling would stop without Bacteria and Archaea. Without microbes, decomposition would become very little, except disassociation and inherent catabolic enzymatic activity. Due to lack decomposition, the waste of human and animal would increase rapidly (Reyniers et al, 1949).

The commensal microbes live in our bodies and train up our immune systems (Collins & Bercik, 2009). If we sudden spread by contact between the pathogen, it would likely to suffer from disease that shorten humankind’s lifespan.

Without bacterial denitrification and anaerobic ammonia oxidation, the fixed nitrogen would severely depleted over a period of time (Bender et al, 1994). Since one of the function of nitrogen in plants is to produce chlorophyll, lack nitrogen would cease photosynthesis, and then stop producing oxygen and food. Lipson points out that most photosynthesis would end within a year, without human works.

The existed atmospheric oxygen could satisfy surviving organisms for decades or centuries. Therefore, we do not have to worry about asphyxiation of organisms in short term when the world without microbes.