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“Always trust a microbiologist because they have the best chance of predicting when the world will end”
― Teddie O. Rahube

“Quick dinner with ... Ang [Lee] and his wife Jane who's visiting with the children for a while. We talked about her work as a microbiologist and the behaviour of the epithingalingie under the influence of cholesterol. She's fascinated by cholesterol. Says it's very beautiful: bright yellow. She says Ang is wholly uninterested. He has no idea what she does.
I check this out for myself. 'What does Jane do?' I ask.
'Science,' he says vaguely.”
― Emma Thompson, The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film

“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

“It was a fungal party hellscape.”
― Robin Sloan, Sourdough

“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, Infectious Diseases: In Context

“Germans at the time believed, a little oddly, that dyes killed germs by turning the germsâ€� vital organs the wrong color.”
― Sam Kean, The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements

“The cause of nutrition and growth resides not in the organism as a whole but in the separate elementary parts—the cells.”
― Theodor Schwann, Mikroskopische Untersuchungen Uber Die Ubereinstimmung in Der Struktur Und Dem Wachstum Der Tiere Und Pflanzen

“The more formidable the contradiction between inexhaustible life-joy and inevitable fate, the greater the longing which reveals itself in the kingdom of poetry and in the self-created world of dreams hopes to banish the dark power of reality. The gods enjoy eternal youth, and the search for the means of securing it was one of the occupations of the heroes of mythology and the sages, as it was of real adventurers in the middle ages and more recent times. . . . But the fountain of youth has not been found, and can not be found if it is sought in any particular spot on the earth. Yet it is no fable, no dream-picture; it requires no adept to find it: it streams forth inexhaustible in all living nature.”
― Ferdinand Cohn

“Microbiology teaches us that size is no measure of significance; even the smallest microbe can wield immense power. Microbes are the silent warriors; these tiniest beings possess the strength to spark a revolution that can have monumental impacts in the world of science.”
― Aloo Denish

“For comparison, tap out a single grain of salt from a shaker. You could line up about ten skin cells along one side of it. You could line up about a hundred bacteria. Compared to viruses, however, bacteria are giants. You could line up a thousand viruses alongside that same grain of salt.”
― Carl Zimmer, A Planet of Viruses

“Scientists working on the origin of life deserve a lot of credit; they have attacked the problem by experiment and calculation, as science should. And although the experiments have not turned out as many hoped, through their efforts we now have a clear idea of the staggering difficulties that would face an origin of life by natural chemical processes.
In private many scientists admit that science has no explanation for the beginning of life.”
― Michael Behe

“It’s the start of a new era, when people are finally ready to embrace the microbial world.

When I walked through San Diego Zoo with Rob Knight at the start of this book, I was struck by how different everything seemed with microbes in mind. Every visitor, keeper, and animal looked like a world on legs � a mobile ecosystem that interacted with others, largely oblivious to their inner multitudes.

When I drive through Chicago with Jack Gilbert, I experience the same dizzying shift in perspective. I see the city’s microbial underbelly â€� the rich seam of life that coats it, and moves through it on gusts of wind and currents of water and mobile bags of flesh. I see friends shaking hands, sayingâ€� “how do you doâ€�, and exchanging living organisms. I see people walking down the street, ejecting clouds of themselves in their wake. I see the decisions through which we have inadvertently shaped the microbial world around us: the choice to build with concrete versus brick, the opening of a window, and the daily schedule to which a janitor now mops the floor. And I see, in the driver’s seat, a guy who notices those rivers of microscopic life and is enthralled rather than repelled by them. He knows that microbes are mostly not to be feared or destroyed, but to be cherished, admired, and studied.”
― Ed Yong, I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life

“the most traumatized are the ones who shape our culture like a microbiologist shapes clay on their lunch break after looking at too many cultures,' the skunk explained.”
― J.S. Mason, A Dragon, A Pig, and a Rabbi Walk into a Bar...and other Rambunctious Bites

“Without this [Soil Food Web system of bacteria, fungi etc], most important nutrients would drain from soil. Instead, they are retained in the bodies of soil life.

Here is the gardener's truth: when you apply a chemical fertilizer, a tiny bit hits the rhizosphere, where it is absorbed, but most of it continues to drain through soil until it hits the water table. Not so with the nutrients locked up inside soil organisms, a state known as immobilization; these nutrients are eventually released as wastes, or mineralized.”
― Jeff Lowenfels, Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web

“Bacteria are so small they need to stick to things or they will wash away; to attach themselves, they produce a slime, the secondary result of which is that individual soil particles are bound together. [...]

Fungal hyphae, too, travel through soil, sticking to them and binding them together, thread-like, into aggregates. [...]

The soil food web, then, in addition to providing nutrients to roots in the rhizosphere, also helps create soil structure: the activities of its members bind soil particles together even as they provide for the passage of air and water through the soil. [...]

The nets or webs fungi form around roots act as physical barriers to invasion and protect plants from pathogenic fungi and bacteria. Bacteria coat surfaces so thoroughly, there is no room for others to attach themselves. If something impacts these fungi or bacteria and their numbers drop or they disappear, the plant can easily be attacked.”
― Jeff Lowenfels, Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web

“Few realize that a great deal of the energy that results from photosyntheisis in the leaves is actually used by plants to produce chemicals they secrete through their roots. These secretions are known as exudates. [...]

Root exudates are in the form of carbohydrates (including sugars) and proteins. Amazingly, their presence wakes up, attracts and grows specific beneficial bacteria and fungi living in the soil that subsist on these exudates and the cellular material sloughed off as the plant's root tips grow. [...]

During different times of the growing season, populations of rhizosphere bacteria and fungi wax and wane, depending on the nutrient needs of the plant and the exudates it produces. [...]

Plants produce exudates that attract fungi and bacteria (and, ultimately, nematodes and protozoa); their survival depends on the interplay between these microbes. It is a completely natural system, the very same one that has fueled plants since they evolved. Soil life produces the nutrients needed for plant life, and plants initiate and fuel the cycle by producing exudates.”
― Jeff Lowenfels, Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web

“There's no such thing as good and bad bacteria or fungi. It's not good and bad. It's just whether there's too much of it or too little of it and things are out of balance, so the 'bad things' have an opportunity to prosper.”
― Nigel Palmer, The Regenerative Grower's Guide to Garden Amendments: Using Locally Sourced Materials to Make Mineral and Biological Extracts and Ferments

“Microbiology teaches us that size is no measure of significance; even the smallest microbe can wield immense power. Microbes are the silent warriors; these tiniest beings possess the strength to spark a revolution that can have monumental impacts in the world of science.”
― Aloo Denish Obiero

“Microbiology is a journey through the invisible kingdoms, exploring the profound influence of the infinitesimal in shaping the visible world.”
― Aloo Denish Obiero

“If microbes are controlling the brain, then microbes are controlling everything.”
― John F. Cryan, The Psychobiotic Revolution: Mood, Food, and the New Science of the Gut-Brain Connection

“Microbes surround us and suffuse us. We are seriously outnumbered. A single bacterium, given enough to eat, could multiply until its brethren reached the mass of the Earth in just two days. That’s a big clue to their superpower: They are excellent at reproduction.”
― Scott C. Anderson, The Psychobiotic Revolution: Mood, Food, and the New Science of the Gut-Brain Connection

“Microbes can mutate every 20 minutes, while humans try to counterpunch with genetic evolutionary updates every 10,000 years or so. They are genetic dynamos, running circles around us.”
― Scott C. Anderson, The Psychobiotic Revolution: Mood, Food, and the New Science of the Gut-Brain Connection

“Millions of years ago, bacteria and animals struck up a deal. In return for a moist bed and a warm buffet, beneficial bacteria took up the job of defending us against the madly proliferating pathogens in the world. It takes a germ to fight a germ.”
― Scott C. Anderson

“When everything is running smoothly, you pay no attention to your gut. Like your heart or your liver, it’s best if these things are on autopilot. Your conscious mind is too busy looking for your keys to be trusted with running these critical organs.”
― Scott C. Anderson, The Psychobiotic Revolution: Mood, Food, and the New Science of the Gut-Brain Connection

“The community of microbes living in your gut—your so-called microbiota—is like another organ of your body. It’s a seething alien living inside of you, fermenting your food and jealously protecting you against interlopers. It’s a pretty unusual organ by any measure, but even more so in that its composition changes with every meal.”
― Scott C. Anderson, The Psychobiotic Revolution: Mood, Food, and the New Science of the Gut-Brain Connection

“It may be a shock to the ego, but you are not alone in your body, and your microbiota is right now making plans for your future. By manipulating your cravings and mood, it gains control over your behavior.”
― Scott C. Anderson, The Psychobiotic Revolution: Mood, Food, and the New Science of the Gut-Brain Connection

“Only one percent of your genes are human, and those genes are fairly stable, but your microbial genes—the other 99 percent—are in constant flux. Measured by your genes, you’re a different creature each and every morning.”
― Scott C. Anderson, The Psychobiotic Revolution: Mood, Food, and the New Science of the Gut-Brain Connection

“A human being is nothing more than a very large community, on every level.”
― Bill François, Eloquence of the Sardine: Extraordinary Encounters Beneath the Sea

“Fieldwork is where theory meets truth.”
― Aloo Denish Obiero