microorganism

n.
An organism of microscopic or submicroscopic size, especially a bacterium or protozoan.

noun

A minute organism usually producing disease: bug, germ, microbe. See beings.

(mī'krō ōr'gənizəm)
n

A minute living organism, such as a bacterium, virus, rickettsia, yeast, or fungus. These organisms may exist as part of the normal flora of the oral cavity without producing disease. With disturbance of the more or less balanced interrelationship between the organisms or between the organisms and host resistance, individual forms of microorganisms may overgrow and induce disease in the host’s tissues. Of course, organisms foreign to the individual may invade and produce pathologic processes.

Three basic shapes. (Stepp/Woods, 1998)

Microorganisms are organisms (forms of life) requiring magnification to see and resolve their structures. "Microorganism" is a general term that becomes more understandable if it is divided into its principal types—bacteria, yeasts, molds, protozoa, algae, and rickettsia—predominantly unicellular microbes. Viruses are also included, although they cannot live or reproduce on their own. They are particles, not cells; they consist of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) or ribonucleic acid (RNA), but not both. Viruses invade living cells—bacteria, algae, fungi, protozoa, plants, and animals (including humans)—and use their hosts' metabolic and genetic machinery to produce thousands of new virus particles. Some viruses can transform normal cells to cancer cells. Rickettsias and chlamydiae are very small cells that can grow and multiply only inside other living cells. Although bacteria, actinomycetes, yeasts, and molds are cells that must be magnified in order to see them, when cultured on solid media that allow their growth and multiplication, they form visible colonies consisting of millions of cells.

Many people think of microorganisms mainly in terms of "germs" causing diseases, but some "germs" are beneficial to humans and the environment. Diseasecausing (pathogenic) microorganisms need to be controlled, and in many cases, beneficial microorganisms are also controlled in plant and food production.

For thousands of years, people had no concept or knowledge of organisms invisible to the naked eye. In fact, it is only within the last several hundred years that magnification systems (lenses, magnifiers, microscopes) were developed that enabled scientists to observe microorganisms. In 1673 Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, a linen merchant in Delft in the Netherlands, was the first to observe and study microorganisms, using single lenses that magnified objects fifty to three hundred times. The role played by microorganisms was not clarified until the 1830s, when Theodor Schwann in Germany demonstrated that yeasts were responsible for alcohol production in beer and wine fermentations.

In 1854, Louis Pasteur in France found that spoilage of wines was due to microorganisms (bacteria) that convert sugars to lactic acid, rather than the alcohol produced by yeasts. He developed the process of "pasteurization," in which the temperature of food materials is raised to about 140 to 158°F (60 to 70°C), thereby killing many spoilage organisms. Pasteur also discovered that certain bacteria are responsible for the souring of milk. Today, milk is generally pasteurized to reduce its content of microorganisms, to extend its keeping quality, and to protect against pathogenic microorganisms that may be present.

Pasteur also discovered that each type of fermentation, as defined by the end products, is caused by specific microorganisms and requires certain conditions of acidity or alkalinity. He discovered further that some microorganisms, the aerobes, require oxygen and others, the anaerobes, grow only in the absence of oxygen. The latter probably developed in the earliest days of the earth when there was no oxygen in the atmosphere.

Microorganisms are present in high populations in soil, and in varying numbers in the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat; they are on our skin and in our noses, throats, mouths, intestinal tracts, and other bodily cavities. They are everywhere in our environment.

Evolution of Microorganisms

Microorganisms came into being on earth over a period of about 1.2 to 1.5 billion years. Fossil microbes have been found in rocks 3.3 to 3.5 billion years old. Since then, microorganisms have had the principal task of recycling organic matter in the environment. As such they are absolutely essential to the health of the earth. Without them, the earth would be a gigantic, permanent waste dump.

Microorganisms are responsible for recycling the huge masses of organic matter synthesized by plants as life on earth evolved. Furthermore, microorganisms—the cyanobacteria or their DNA in the chloroplasts in plant cells—were the source of most of the free oxygen in the early atmosphere. They also oxidize ammonia (the universal end product of protein metabolism) to nitrate, which is the only nitrogen source used by plants and is therefore essential for production of our plant foods. Microorganisms also are responsible for cellulose hydrolysis in the rumens (first stomach compartments) of cattle, facilitating the production of animal protein for human consumption. And, in recent times, microorganisms have been the sources of antibiotics that have enabled the cure of numerous diseases.

Blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) are prokaryotes (that is, their cells have no distinct nucleus). They are very independent nutritionally since they can perform photosynthesis using chlorophyll a. Thus they can synthesize sugars for energy from carbon dioxide using the sun's radiation. They also release oxygen. They can respire aerobically and can fix nitrogen, generating amino acids and protein. They require only water, nitrogen gas, oxygen, carbon dioxide, some minerals, and sunlight. The evidence is that they were on earth 3.2 billion years ago. The cyanobacteria are among the earliest microorganisms and very important even today.

Green algae are eukaryotes (that is, their cells have a distinct nucleus). They evolved about one billion years ago. They contain chlorophylls a and b, which enable them to convert carbon dioxide, through sunlight radiation, to sugars, and to polymerize sugars to starches, hemicelluloses, and celluloses—some of our most important sources of food energy.

Green algae are still major sources of food in the oceans. Green algae were likely the life forms that evolved into plants, which first lived primarily in the oceans but moved to the land about 450 million years ago, about the same time as the amphibians and first land animals evolved. It is believed that the first mammals evolved about 150 million years later, along with insects and reptiles, which were dominant. Another 150 million years later, dinosaurs and the first birds evolved, along with the first flowering plants. During the entire period from 3.6 billion years ago, microorganisms were consuming and recycling the organic matter from themselves and other forms of life as they lived and died. For several billion years, bacteria, algae, and other microorganisms served as food for other microbes and for higher animals as they evolved. When plants evolved in the oceans and then subsequently moved to land, they became the major sources of food for other forms of life, including microorganisms, animals, and eventually humans.

Evolution of Plants: the Basis for Human Foods and Animal Feeds

For at least 400 million years before humans appeared on earth, plants were producing food consisting of leaves, stems, seeds, nuts, berries, fruits, tubers, etc., that made life possible for humans and animals when they evolved. Early plant evolution was essential not only for food but also for producing an oxygen environment necessary for animal and human survival. Plants introduced a very effective way of using the sun's radiation to transform carbon dioxide into food materials, such as sugars, starches, and cellulose, through the green pigment chlorophyll and the organelle that serves as the site for photosynthesis, the chloroplast.

Both plants and animals evolved in a microbial environment, where the microbes were ready and able to recycle organic matter. Plants and animals had to develop ways of resisting microbial invasion. Plants did this in part by developing a lignocellulosic body resistant to microbial breakdown. Humans also evolved in a sea of microorganisms and have a tough skin over their bodies resistant to microbial invasion. They had to develop internal immune systems against invasion by microorganisms. Human blood contains phagocytes similar to and probably derived from free-living amoebas, which search out and consume invading bacteria. Then as now, some microorganisms could invade the live animal or human, causing disease.

Microbes enter our bodies in the air we breathe into our noses and lungs, into our mouths and throats, stomachs, and intestinal tracts via the water and foods we swallow, through our eye sockets, through our skin via abrasions and punctures, and through our genitals and other mucous membranes. This intimate contact with microbes begins at birth and continues through life. Some microorganisms become regular inhabitants, parasites of our bodies; they become what can be described as our normal flora. Some microorganisms are virulent, invading our bodies and upsetting our metabolic activities and causing disease; these are the pathogenic microbes. Other microbes are normal microbial flora or pathogens on plants. Still other microbes are continuously invading plant food materials and recycling the organic matter. If this activity is controlled and stopped at the proper levels, these become our fermented foods, which include alcoholic foods and beverages; vinegars; lactic-acidfermented cabbage and other vegetables (that is, sauerkraut and pickles); lactic-acid-fermented milks and cheeses; sourdough breads; Indian idli (from rice); Ethiopian enjera (a bread made from teff, an indigenous cereal grass); textured-vegetable-protein meat-substitutes, such as Indonesian tempeh (from soybeans or, sometimes, peanuts) and ontjom (from peanuts or, sometimes, soy fiber); high-salt meat-flavored amino acid/peptide soy sauces and pastes; African alkaline-fermented foods such as dawadawa, soumbara, and iru (all from locust beans [Parkia biglobosa] or soybeans); Indian kenima, Japanese natto, and Thai thua-nao (all from soybeans); and leavened yeast breads.

Microorganisms Causing Food Poisoning

Three species of bacteria cause food poisoning via preformed toxin: Clostridium botulinum, Staphylococcus aureus, and Bacillus cereus.

Clostridium botulinum is a bacterium that grows in the absence of oxygen and produces one of the most toxic, deadly chemicals known to humans. It was first isolated from sausages, but later was responsible for death in persons consuming home-canned vegetables. The symptoms are flaccid paralysis eighteen to thirty-six hours after ingestion, with respiratory paralysis and death if untreated. There are antitoxins against botulinum toxin, if the type is identified and the antitoxin is injected in time. Botulinum toxin can be inactivated by heating the food to boiling for five minutes. Interestingly enough, botulinum toxin, in spite of its great toxicity is finding a use in eliminating lines and wrinkles from human skin by preventing activity of muscles directly involving those areas of the skin that have wrinkles or expressions. This is partially a response to the fact that very toxic substances in minute quantities can become stimulants.

A second serious type of food poisoning is caused by the ingestion of staphylococcal toxin produced by Staphylococcus aureus in foods such as cream puffs, mayonnaise, ice cream, or other nutritious foods that become infected with staphylococci, often carried in the nasal secretions of food handlers. Staphylococcal toxin causes a rather violent nausea and vomiting thirty minutes to six hours after consuming food contaminated with the toxin. Staphylococcus toxin is not inactivated by boiling. It generally is not fatal.

Bacillus cereus also produces a food-poisoning toxin. Steamed rice held overnight at room temperature has been a typical food causing Bacillus cereus poisoning. There are two toxins involved—one causing nausea and vomiting, the other causing diarrhea. The toxins are not inactivated by boiling.

Microorganisms Producing Food Poisoning By Toxins Formed in the Intestinal Tract

Clostridium perfringens, an anaerobic microorganism that can cause gangrene in wounds, can also cause food poisoning if it overgrows food materials, such as gravies and meats, which are then consumed. It produces its toxin in the intestinal tract of the consumer and causes diarrhea.

Vibrio cholerae is a major cause of cholera in man; it is spread via contaminated water and food. The symptoms are profuse diarrhea, which, if not treated to replace fluids in the body, will lead to death. Vibrio parahemolyticus, found in contaminated shellfish, also leads to profuse diarrhea and requires fluid replacement and antibiotics.

Shiga toxin–producing Escherichia coli (STEC), found in contaminated water and meats such as hamburger, is a serious food pathogen leading to hemorrhagic colitis (diarrhea with blood). Bovine products are a major source, but lettuce, alfalfa sprouts, and apple cider have also been implicated.

Enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) is frequently found in developing countries in contaminated water and food and is associated with travelers' diarrhea (diarrhea without blood).

Food-Borne Bacteria Invading Intestinal Epithelial Cells

Common causes of food-borne illness are salmonella bacteria. Salmonella typhi and Salmonella paratyphi, gram negative bacilli that invade the intestinal epithelial cells, cause typhoid and paratyphoid fever, respectively. They are generally found in water or food contaminated with fecal material from carriers of salmonella. Other salmonellae are carried by infected poultry meats and eggs.

Campylobacter spp. are now recognized as one of the most common causes of food gastroenteritis. Main vehicles are raw meats (especially poultry), milk, and water. Fever (sometimes high), headache, and myalgia (muscle pain) precede nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Yersinia spp., carried chiefly in undercooked pork but sometimes also in milk, is another serious food-borne infection.

Listeria monocytogenes is the cause of a food-borne disease that is frightening because of its high mortality (fatality is over twenty percent). Among incriminated foods are milk, cheese, raw vegetables, and undercooked meat, including frankfurters.

Viral food-borne pathogens include hepatitis A, hepatitis E, rotavirus, and Norwalk virus. Although these viruses do not reproduce in food or water, they are spread by contaminated human carriers and food handlers through such media.

Fermented Foods

Seeds for plants germinate in the soil surrounded and covered with microorganisms. A pinch of dirt can contain a billion microorganisms of many types. The plants destined as foods for humans and animals grow in soil surrounded and covered with microorganisms ready to invade any organic matter and recycle it (essentially consume the organic matter and return it to compost utilizable by new seeds and plants). When the plant materials—seeds, nuts, leaves, tubers, stems, roots—are harvested, they are contaminated or infected with the types of microbes present in the soil; the microbes immediately start to grow on any susceptible organic matter that is available, as long as there is sufficient moisture to allow growth. Dry seeds and leaves are resistant to overgrowth by microorganisms, but as soon as they absorb enough moisture, they become susceptible to microbial growth. If the products of the microbial growth have desirable or attractive aromas and flavors and if they are nontoxic and do not cause disease when consumed, they can be described as "fermented foods" and can become an accepted food in the diet. If they have unpleasant aromas or bad flavors or if they cause food poisoning or death when consumed, they are considered to be spoiled and become garbage on their way to compost or soil. From the earliest times, our food supply has been strongly affected by fermentation.

Alcoholic beverages. The earliest sweet food on earth was likely honey, produced by honeybees and stored for their future use. Humans, in competition with animals such as bears, have always striven to collect honey for their own consumption. Honey is very resistant to spoilage in its concentrated form (about eighty percent sugars), but if it is collected and stored in a container and becomes diluted by rain water, yeasts present in the environment ferment the sugar in the honey to ethyl alcohol (ethanol). The products are called mead or honey wine, one of the earliest alcoholic beverages known to humans and still consumed today.

Similarly when humans started collecting sweet fruits and berries in containers, the juices as well as the fruits and berries themselves were quickly invaded by yeasts on the surfaces of the fruits that ferment the sugars to alcohol (actually a step in recycling), producing a primitive wine. For better or worse, humans have prized alcoholic beverages and they are still consumed in large quantities throughout the world except in those populations that avoid alcohol because of religious restrictions. In some religions, wines are a component of the religious services. Humans discovered ways of producing other alcoholic beverages. For example, early man probably discovered that chewed corn when mixed with water and stored in a container produces an alcoholic beverage. The process occurs because saliva contains an enzyme, diastase, that converts starch in the corn to sugars; then yeasts in the environment ferment the sugars to alcohol. The beverage thus produced is called chicha in the Andes region of South America. In ancient times, an emperor in that region could hold office only as long as he delivered sufficient chicha to the citizens to keep them happy. Even today, among families in the Andes region, husbands will get drunk one weekend and wives will get drunk the next, ensuring that at least one parent is sober and able to look after the children.

Juices from palm trees are collected by cutting the flowers and allowing the sap to flow through bamboo tubes into a container. As the juices flow through the tubes, they become infected with yeasts and other microorganisms. The sugars are fermented to alcohol and the product, palm wine, is produced in large quantities in the tropics. It is very rich in vitamins valuable to the consumer.

When cereal grains such as rice, barley, wheat, and corn are collected and soaked, or if they become wet from rain, they start to germinate, and starch in the seeds is changed to fermentable sugars that are fermented by yeasts in the environment, yielding an alcoholic beer. It has been suggested by anthropologists that this process was an early cause of fundamental social change. To ensure the continuity of supply of fermentable sugars, people settled in permanent locations. Agriculture, in turn, was a way of ensuring the regularity of production of fermentable cereal grains.

Alcoholic beverages are major fermented foods in the diet of humans. The yeast fermentation not only leads to a highly accepted beverage, it is a safe method of preserving fruit and berry juices until they can be consumed. The yeasts also enrich the beverages with B-vitamins.

As long as the wine or beer is kept anaerobic (air is excluded), it is preserved, but if there is access to air, there is a second fermentation by bacteria (Acetobacter) in the environment that transforms the alcohol to acetic acid (vinegar), which is even more preservative than ethyl alcohol. Many primitive wines and beers contain both alcohol and acetic acid. The vinegar fermentation is an ancient process that is still very important today. Vinegar is used to preserve cucumbers and other vegetables as pickles, which make an important contribution to the food supply of people around the world.

Milk products. As soon as humans started milking cows, they found that milk held a few hours at room temperature became sour. They did not know why, but it was, in fact, the streptococci and lactobacilli in the environment that produce lactic acid from lactose in the milk. This is the basis for yogurts, and the souring process as practiced in the early days also led to the development of cheeses.

The principal early milks were those from sheep or goats. Milk was often collected and stored in animal stomachs or hides, which allowed for the souring process to occur, the butter to be removed, and the milk curds to accumulate. The skin of a sheep or goat was carefully removed undamaged. The openings of the limbs and neck and the natural openings were tied. The hair was removed and the skin bag was used to collect the milk. During souring, the curds separate from the whey. The curds gradually lose moisture through the porous container, and further microbial activity and chemical changes lead to a primitive cheese. Today there are more than three hundred types of milk cheeses available. They have a wide range of flavors and textures and add variety and high-quality nutrition to the diets of consumers.

In addition to the bacterial cheeses, fungal cheeses involving growth of Penicillium roqueforti (Roquefort cheese and blue cheese) and Penicillium camemberti (Camembert cheese) on or in the cheese curd led to new flavors and textures for this class of fermented foods.

The Chinese developed a cheese from soybean milk, called sufu. Soybeans are soaked, ground with water, filtered to obtain the fluid milk, and heated to near boiling, and the curd is precipitated with calcium or magnesium salts. The filtered and pressed curd is then inoculated and becomes overgrown with Mucor spp. mold, after which it is aged in a salt and alcoholic brine. It is then ready for consumption.

Lactic-acid fermentations. An ancient food-fermentation technique is found in the South Pacific, where islanders centuries ago discovered that foods such as cassava, plantains, and bananas could be preserved for long times by piercing them and packing them in pits that were sealed against oxygen entry. Lactobacilli, leuconostocs, and streptococci ferment sugars in the stored food materials to lactic acid, acidifying them and preserving the food against spoilage as long as the pits remain sealed. Pits opened after one hundred years of storage have revealed edible products—the result of bacterial fermentation.

In Ethiopia, pulp of the false banana, a starchy paste, is similarly stored in pits and undergoes lactic-acid fermentation, preserving the starch, which serves as a base for bread. Lactic-acid fermentations of cabbage—for example, sauerkraut and Korean kimchi (which is based upon Chinese cabbage, radishes, and red pepper)—are important processes around the world. Sauerkraut and kimchi are particularly interesting applications of bacterial fermentation. The cabbage is shredded and two to three percent common salt is added. The salt extracts nutrients from the cabbage and a series of bacterial species (Leuconostoc, Lactobacillus, Pediococcus) overgrow the cabbage, producing lactic acid and carbon dioxide that preserve the cabbage; and as long as the product is kept anaerobic, it remains preserved.

Soybeans, with a content of about twenty percent fat and forty percent protein, are a very nutritious food source, first cultivated in Asia. They are harvested dry and have an excellent keeping quality. However, if they are moistened or soaked in water, they become susceptible to overgrowth by bacteria that first acidify them. Then they may be boiled, as in preparation for eating. After this, they become susceptible to overgrowth by molds. In Korea and northern China, the average temperature is cool, below 86°F (30°C), and the moistened soybeans become overgrown by Aspergillus oryzae, a mold that is present in the environment, particularly on the soybean straw. If such soybeans are stored under the roof, as is commonly practiced, the soybeans first become white from the mold mycelium (a mass of filamentous growth). Then they become green from the mold spores. During this time, the mold is producing many kinds of digestive enzymes. If such mold-covered soybeans are then mixed with water and salt to form a paste, it will be found that the paste has a meatlike flavor because of the amino acids and peptides released by the mold as it digests the soybean proteins. The end product of this process, called miso in Japan and chiang (soybean paste) in China, is used extensively as an ingredient for soup. If the mold-covered soybeans are placed in salt water, especially concentrated salt brine, it is found that the soybeans, which are initially bland in flavor, become meat-flavored, as in the miso process. The product, when filtered, is soy sauce. Today, soy sauces are used to season and marinate foods, not only in Asia but around the world.

Soybeans are also used in Southeast Asia—in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam. However, the average temperature is generally higher, about 90 to 100°F (32 to 38°C). Aspergillus molds grow optimally at about 77 to 86°F (25 to 38°C), so they tend to invade the soybeans in North Asia. In Southeast Asia, other molds such as Rhizopus oryzae and Mucor spp. grow faster and better at the higher temperature. Thus the environment becomes infected with spores of these molds. When soybeans are soaked or moistened in Southeast Asia and are then cooked and cooled, they become overgrown with molds of the Rhizopus or Mucor types. If allowed to digest as a paste or in salt brine, they also can lead to a soy-sauce or miso flavor, but the Indonesians and Malaysians allow the mold-covered soybeans to become knitted into a cake that can be sliced and deep-fat fried or used in soups as a substitute for meat, which is generally in short supply in the diet. The product is called tempeh kedelee when made from soybeans. The Indonesians have developed other products using peanut and coconut press cakes (from the production of oil) as substrates. The pulverized, soaked press cakes are re–formed into cakes and steamed. They then become overgrown with Rhizopus or Neurospora molds to produce foods called ontjom (peanut) and bongkrek (coconut) that like tempeh have a texture that allows them to be sliced and used as a substitute for meat in soups.

Fermented foods have been consumed by humans for centuries and are generally safe, but it should be cautioned that some molds produce toxic, even carcinogenic, products (for example, aflatoxins) and should not be consumed.

There are numerous other fermented foods that utilize edible microorganisms in their production and add variety and nutritive value to our diets.

The Role of Microorganisms in Soil

Plant life, our basic food supply, is dependent upon the trillions and trillions of microbes that exist in the soil, degrading organic matter, recycling nitrogen and carbon, and producing new soil in forms plants can use directly. Thus, good soil, far from being dead, should be described as "living soil," because of its content of living microorganisms. In fact, the rhizosphere, the area surrounding the roots of most plants, contains a wide variety of microorganisms that help the plant to absorb minerals and other plant nutrients. Some plants, such as legumes, have nodules on their roots that contain nitrogen-fixing bacteria, which take nitrogen from the air and produce nitrogen compounds the plants use in the synthesis of amino acids and protein; these are an important protein source in the human diet.

Microorganisms As Food

Blue-green algae of the genus Spirulina have been harvested from ponds and eaten for centuries by the ancient Aztecs in Mexico and Africans in the region of Lake Chad.

Mushrooms, the fruiting bodies of microorganisms that live on decaying lignocellulosic compounds in soil, are highly prized as food by nearly all human societies, as well as by many animals, including insects.

Fermentation plays several roles: (1) enrichment of the human diet through development of a wide diversity of flavors, aromas, and textures in food; (2) preservation of substantial amounts of food through lactic acid, alcoholic, acetic acid, and alkaline fermentations; (3) enrichment of food substrates biologically with protein, essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, and vitamins. Protein content is often increased, as for example in Malaysian tape ketan and tape ketella by utilization of the carbohydrates, lowering their percentage and raising the percentage of protein in the food. Protein quality is also increased by the synthesis of essential amino acids such as lysine, first limiting amino acid in rice. In the Malaysian tape fermentation the content of lysine is raised, improving its protein quality. In the Indian idli fementation, it has been reported that methionine, the first limiting amino acid in many legumes, is increased from 10.6 to 60 percent. Highly polished rice is deficient in thiamine (vitamin B₁), and consumption can lead to beriberi, a disease characterized by muscular weakness. In the Malaysian tape fermentation, thiamine content is raised to that of the original unpolished rice. In the Indonesian tempeh fermentation the content of riboflavin doubles, niacin increases seven-fold, and vitamin B_12, which generally absent in vegetarian foods, is synthesized. In the African kafir beer fermentation, riboflavin doubles and niacin/nicotinic acid concentration nearly doubles. Mexican pulque, the oldest alcoholic beverage on the American continent, contains thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, pyridoxine, and biotin that are of particular importance to the low income children of Mexico.

There is much hunger, starvation, and malnutrition in parts of the world today, and the world population is predicted to reach eight to twelve billion by the year 2050. As world population increases, the supply of meat and other animal products available per person is likely to decrease. A large, capable research institute in England has developed a process in which edible mold mycelium is grown and used to provide protein and texture for meat analogues (substitutes) for the human diet. Microbial protein can also be extracted from cells, and then concentrated, isolated, and spun or extruded to make meat substitutes.

Although this would appear to be very advanced technology, the Indonesians for centuries have overgrown soaked, partially cooked soybean cotyledons with the mold Rhizopus oligosporus (as mentioned above), which knits the soybean cotyledons into a firm cake that can be sliced and deep-fat fried or used in chunks as a substitute for meat in soups. The protein content rivals that of meat and the cost is very low, within the means of the average Indonesian. Also, the microorganisms involved enrich the food with vitamin B₁₂, increase niacin by a factor of seven, and double the riboflavin content.

Among plants, the grasses are the most efficient fixers and utilizers of carbon dioxide, producing sugars, starches, and cellulose; they are also synthesizers of protein, using nitrogen from the soil. Grasses can double their cell-mass in two to three weeks. A 1000 kg harvest of grass can be repeated every two to three weeks. However, yeasts are much more efficient in this regard. A yeast (1000 kg) grown in tanks on limited land space can produce 168,000 kg of cells containing 84,000 kg of protein every two weeks.

Bacteria are even more efficient: whereas yeasts can double their cell mass in about two hours, some bacteria can double their cell mass in twenty minutes. Still, 1000 kg of yeast growing in a suitable fermentor can produce 1000 kg of new cells for harvesting every two hours, with a daily production of 12,000 kg of cells containing 50 percent or 6000 kg of protein. (Molds generally grow more slowly, doubling their cell mass in four to six hours.) Since the protein content of bacterial cells may reach 80 percent (compared with 40 to 45 percent in soybeans, for example), there is no method of producing protein that can compete with microbial cells. Except for algae, microbes require energy sources such as sugars, starches, cellulose, or hydrocarbons—all derived originally from the sun's radiation. But they can utilize energy sources that humans cannot digest, such as cellulose and lignocellulose found in straw. As described earlier, mushrooms are a good example of such microorganisms: they produce delicious, edible food directly from straw and sugarcane bagasse.

Only about twenty-five species of more than two thousand edible fungi are widely accepted as human food. The four most important mushrooms are the commonly cultivated white mushroom or button mushroom (Agaricus campestris), the black forest mushroom shiitake (Lentinus edodes), the straw mushroom (Volvariella volvacea), and the oyster mushroom (Pleurotus ostreatus).

Mushrooms can be grown on a wide variety of inexpensive, inedible substrates such as cereal straws, sugarcane bagasse, banana leaves, sawdust, cotton wastes, and animal manure. World production of straw is estimated to be about two billion tons. One kg of dry straw compost material can yield one kg of fresh mushrooms. Thus, straw, if all were used for production of mushrooms worldwide, could provide eight billion consumers with 250 grams of fresh mushrooms daily. Mushrooms are high in essential amino acids and nutritional value. They also appeal to almost all consumers for their flavors and flavor-enhancing capabilities. Mushrooms, a microbial product, are thus likely to play an important role in feeding the world in the future. And straw, after serving as a substrate for mushroom production, is nutritionally superior to raw straw for feeding cattle. The straw has been partially recycled and made more digestible in the process.

As world population rises in the twenty-first century, microbes may be used to a much greater extent to feed mankind, or at least feed animals that, in turn, will yield meat for the human diet. Humans, plants, and animals have been intimately involved with microorganisms ever since they evolved. While some of the microorganisms cause serious diseases, there are also many that provide foods and feeds and are beneficial to other life on earth.

Bibliography

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Kosikowski, Frank V. Cheese and Fermented Milk Foods. 2d ed. Brooktondale, N.Y.: F. V. Kosikowski, 1982.

Readers Digest Association, Ltd. The Last Two Million Years. London: Readers Digest, 1974.

Schopf, J. W., and B. M. Packer. "Early Archean (3.3 billion-to 3.5 billion-year-old) Microfossils from the Warrawoona Group, Australia." Science 237 (1987): 70–73.

Singleton, Paul. Bacteria in Biology, Biotechnology, and Medicine. 5th ed. New York: Wiley, 1999.

Steinkraus, Keith H. "Bio-Enrichment: Production of Vitamins in Fermented Foods." In Microbiology of Fermented Foods, edited by B. J. B. Wood, pp. 603–621. London: Blackie Academic and Professional, 1998.

Steinkraus, Keith H. "Classification of Fermented Foods: Worldwide Review of Household Fermentation Techniques." Food Control 8, no. 5–6 (1997): 311–317.

Steinkraus, Keith H., ed. Handbook of Indigenous Fermented Foods. 2d ed. New York: M. Dekker, 1996.

Steinkraus, Keith H., ed. Industrialization of Indigenous Fermented Foods. New York: M. Dekker, 1989.

Steinkraus, Keith H. "Nutritional Significance of Fermented Foods." Food Research International 27 (1994): 259–267.

Tortora, Gerard J., Berdell R. Funke, and Christine L. Case. Microbiology: An Introduction. 7th ed. San Francisco: Benjamin Cummings, 2001.

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Wilson, Edward O., et al. Life on Earth. 2d ed. Sunderland, Mass.: Sinauer, 1978.

—Keith H. Steinkraus

A microscopic organism; those of veterinary interest include bacteria, rickettsiae, viruses, fungi and protozoa.

IN BRIEF: Any living thing too tiny to be seen with the naked eye.

Finding just one mutated microorganism can cause the lab to be shut down.

Organisms so small that they can be seen only through a microscope. (See bacteria, protozoa, and viruses.)

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Microorganism

Dansk (Danish)
n. - mikroorganisme

Nederlands (Dutch)
micro-organisme

Français (French)
n. - micro-organisme

Deutsch (German)
n. - Mikroorganismus

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (βιολ.) μικροοργανισμός

Italiano (Italian)
microrganismo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - microorganismo (m) (Biol.)

Русский (Russian)
микроорганизм

Español (Spanish)
n. - microorganismo

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - mikroorganism

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
微生物, 微小动植物

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 微生物, 微小動植物

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 미생물

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 微生物

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) كائن حي مجهري‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮יצור זעיר הניתן לראייה רק במיקרוסקופ, בעיקר חיידק, מיקרו-אורגניזם‬

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