The grand challenge of microbiology: to know better, protect, utilize and celebrate the unseen majority on our planet.

Martin G Klotz

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2010.00001

Abstract

The grand challenge of microbiology: to know better, protect, utilize and celebrate the unseen majority on our planet.

Highlights

After Linneus, Haeckel, Cohn, OrlaJensen, Chatton, Whittaker, Stanier and Doudoroff, research by Carl Woese and colleagues beginning in the 1970s pioneered a new understanding of relationships between all cellular organisms (Woese and Fox, 1977; Woese et al, 1990), which provided a scientific basis for a natural classification of the “unseen majority of life” (Whitman et al, 1998; Ward, 2002; Heijden et al, 2008) and contributed greatly to our present understanding of the origin of life (Koonin and Martin, 2005; Russell, 2007; Wachtershauser, 2007; Forterre, 2008; Glansdorff et al, 2008; Lane et al, 2010)
Koch’s (1876) first scientific implication of a bacterium as the causal agent of disease in an animal and Burrill’s (1878) identification of a bacterium as the cause of plant disease were followed by n umerous etiological reports that implicated bacteria (i.e., Kitasato, Klebs, Koch, Loeffler, Neisser, Pasteur, Pfeiffer, Roux, Smith and Kilbourne, Welch and Nuttall, and Yersin), parasites (Lewis, 1878), fungi (Ophuls and Moffitt, 1900) and viruses (Ivanowski, 1892; Reed et al, 1900) as the causal agents of disease, paired with research on how to protect healthy and infected hosts fromexposure, which started the race for the cure (Pasteur, Ehrlich, Metchnikoff) and, eventually, research (Ehrlich, Kitasato, von Behring) that nurtured hope for finding a “silver bullet.”
I usually escape the frustration by posing the following question: “Imagine that we found the therapies to cure all cancers and genetic failures and can combat every infectious disease directly or indirectly caused by bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites

Summary

Introduction

After Linneus, Haeckel, Cohn, OrlaJensen, Chatton, Whittaker, Stanier and Doudoroff, research by Carl Woese and colleagues beginning in the 1970s pioneered a new understanding of relationships between all cellular organisms (Woese and Fox, 1977; Woese et al, 1990), which provided a scientific basis for a natural classification of the “unseen majority of life” (Whitman et al, 1998; Ward, 2002; Heijden et al, 2008) and contributed greatly to our present understanding of the origin of life (Koonin and Martin, 2005; Russell, 2007; Wachtershauser, 2007; Forterre, 2008; Glansdorff et al, 2008; Lane et al, 2010).

Results

Conclusion