Always trust a microbiologist because they have the best chance of predicting when the world will end”

— Teddie O. Rahube

 

In microbiology the roles of mutation and selection in evolution are coming to be better understood through the use of bacterial cultures of mutant strains.”

— Edward Tatum

 

I’m a microbiologist but writing makes my everyday exciting and fulfilling. I’m intrigued by the mystery of microbes but I just prefer making friends with pens and reams of paper. Writing for me is a terrific experience and it’s more enjoyable than culturing those beautiful creatures in Petri dishes. These organisms will eventually lose their viability but my words will live on, filling the blank sheets with new ideas.”

— Ifeoluwa Egbetade

 

If I set out to prove something I am no real scientist– I have to learn to follow where the facts lead me– I have to learn to whip my prejudices…”

— Spallanzani

 

Humanity shares a common ancestry with all living things on Earth. We often share especially close intimacies with the microbial world. In fact, only a small percentage of the cells in the human body are human at all. Yet, the common biology and biochemistry that unites us also makes us susceptible to contracting and transmitting infectious disease.”

— Brenda Wilmoth Lerner

 

You live in intimate association with bacteria, and you couldn’t survive without them.

— Bonnie Bassler

 

Here at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, we have genetically rearranged various viruses and bacteria as part of our medical research. In fact, we have been able to create entirely new types of DNA molecules by splicing together the genetic information from different organisms – recombinant DNA.

— James D. Watson

 

Without effective human intervention, epidemics and pandemics typically end only when the virus or bacteria has infected every available host and all have either died or become immune to the disease.

— Alan Huffman

 

What you see is that the most outstanding feature of life’s history is a constant domination by bacteria.

— Stephen Jay Gould

 

What’s great about bacteria is you have a surprise every day waiting for you because they’re so fast, they grow overnight.

— Bonnie Bassler

 

When I look back upon the past, I can only dispel the sadness which falls upon me by gazing into that happy future when the infection [puerperal fever] will be banished. But if it is not vouchsafed for me to look upon that happy time with my own eyes … the conviction that such a time must inevitably sooner or later arrive will cheer my dying hour.

— Ignaz Semmelweis

 

For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.

— Richard Dawkins

 

Certain foods, such as meat, appear to harbour toxic bacteria – known as endotoxins – that can trigger inflammation in your arteries, even when food is fully cooked.

— Michael Greger

 

My bacteria glow in the dark – no human being doesn’t like that.

— Bonnie Bassler

 

We have 200 trillion cells, and the outcome of each of them is almost 100 percent genetically determined. And that’s what our experiment with the first synthetic genome proves, at least in the case of really simple bacteria. It’s the interactions of all those separate genetic units that give us the physiology that we see.

—  Craig Venter

 

At the bottom of the ocean, bacteria that are thermophilic and can survive at the steam vent heat that would otherwise produce, if fish were there, sous-vide cooked fish, nevertheless, have managed to make that a hospitable environment for them.

— Harvey V. Fineberg

 

In the womb, humans are free of microbes. Colonization begins during the journey down the birth canal, which is riddled with bacteria, some of which make their way onto the newborn’s skin.

— Robin Marantz Henig

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