Living in a World Without Bacteria

            Many people believe that bacteria only cause disease and death. While we have all suffered from some kind of an infection which we are told is caused some noxious form of bacteria, this is just a small part of what bacteria contribute to out lives.

             First, it would be well to add a bit of science to be clear about what bacteria are. Defined most correctly, bacteria are a large group of one-celled microorganisms widely distributed in nature. Search any microbiological text book and you will see that there are thousands of different types of bacteria in the world, everywhere around us, although only about two thousand species of bacteria have actually been identified. On the most part, bacteria simply share the world with us and are of no specific harm to any human being. They are remarkable organisms for their simplicity of form, their efficiency of life and their rapid ability to reproduce. It has been said that it is possible for some species of bacteria, within the correct environment, to reproduce themselves in the span of about twenty minutes, although most do not reproduce quite so rapidly. . As far as we know, bacteria have been present upon the earth for billions of years and are generally considered to be one of the oldest and simplest forms of life. Most bacteria are very simple as far as their structure and function goes. They have a hard outer wall which is called a capsule; inside this capsule there exists a cell wall which guards the inner workings of the cell, called the cytoplasm. From within the cytoplasm comes the material from which the bacteria are able to reproduce. Interestingly enough, there are no organelles, which are small structures within cells that perform dedicated functions. As the name implies, you can think of organelles as small organs. .

             Most of us go through our lives never actually seeing any kind of bacteria ourselves, because they are so small.

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