Bacteria and Its Effects - By: michael russell

Bacteria are common microscopic organisms that have single cells which do not have any membrane-bounded nucleus or membrane-bounded organelles. Common examples of membrane-bounded organelles are mitochondria and chloroplasts. Bacteria were the primary form of life originating more than 4 billion years ago on earth. These large groups of unicellular micro-organisms can have different shapes like spheres, spirals and even rods. They are just a few micrometers in length.

Bacteria are omnipresent in every environment, even on radioactive waste and in the bodies of animals. To give an indication of its quantity, there are almost 40 million bacterial cells in a single gram of mud and approximately five nonillion (5×1030) bacteria are present on earth at any given point of time. The study and research of bacteria is called bacteriology which is a part of microbiology.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was the first person to discover bacteria in 1676 when he used a microscope (single-lens). This made him the world's first microbiologist to achieve this feat and he penned the name ‘animalcules' for bacteria. An interesting piece of information is that singular form of bacteria is called bacterium. The term bacterium was coined by Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg later in the 18 th century.

There are many bacteria present in our body and they even manage to be on human skin. The human immune system is strong enough to stop the bacteria from damaging our bodies. Some types of the bacteria are useful to humans. Bacteria are known to attach to exterior surfaces and form thick aggregations known as ‘bacterial mats'. Length of these ‘bacterial mats' can vary while some can be as long as half a micrometer. Areas which have these bacterial mats can include numerous types of bacteria, archaea and protists or even all them combined.

Bacteria are known to cause many diseases which can be as common as infections or deadly diseases like diphtheria, syphilis, cholera, typhoid fever, leprosy and even tuberculosis. Tuberculosis alone kills more than a million people all over the world but mostly in African and Asian countries.

Now on a positive side, bacteria help in sewage treatment, cheese and yoghurt production via fermentation. Bacteria are very useful in biotechnology, antibiotics and many other useful chemicals. Popularity of bacteriology has paved way to research in many other fields related to it.

About the Author

There are many aspects to the functioning of bacteria and useful information about it can be found at jrank.org. The free site search engine is easy to use and its science category can lead to detailed discussions of many simple and complex medicinal concepts .

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