Why Microbes?
DOE Microbial Genome Program Report
Imagine! A future in which we can
  • use "super bugs" to detect chemical contamination in soil, air, and water and clean up oil spills and chemicals in landfills;
  • cook and heat with natural gas collected from a backyard septic tank or bottled at a local waste-treatment facility;
  • obtain affordable alcohol-based fuels and solvents from cornstalks, wood chips, and other plant by-products; and
  • produce new classes of antibiotics and process food and chemicals more efficiently.
These scenarios represent only a few of the possible ways that microbes—the invisible bacteria, archaea, protozoa, and fungi that inhabit our environment, our bodies, our food and water, and even the air we breathe—can be harnessed to serve humankind. Technological advances developed over the last decade, particularly in genetic research conducted as part of the international Human Genome Project, are enabling researchers to learn about microbes at their most fundamental level and to begin to ask questions about how the basic parts work together to form a functioning organism. The answers may challenge accepted scientific thought and offer beneficial applications in areas important to DOE's Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program, among them bioremediation, global climate change, biotechnology, and energy production.

Why Microbes?
By some estimates, microbes make up about 60% of the Earth's biomass, yet less than 1% of microbial species have been identified. Microbes play a critical role in natural biogeochemical cycles. Because most do not cause disease in humans, animals, or plants and are difficult to culture, they have received little attention. Microbes have been found surviving and thriving in an amazing diversity of habitats, in extremes of heat, cold, radiation, pressure, salinity, and acidity, often where no other life forms could exist. Identifying and harnessing their unique capabilities, which have evolved over 3.8 billion years, will offer us new solutions to longstanding challenges in environmental and waste cleanup, energy production and use, medicine, industrial processes, agriculture, and other areas. Scientists also are starting to appreciate the role played by microbes in global climate processes, and we can expect insights about both the biological underpinnings of climate change and the contributions of microbes to Earth's biosphere. Their capabilities soon will be added to the list of traditional commercial uses for microbes in the brewing, baking, dairy, and other industries.
The online presentation of this 2000 publication is a special feature of the Human Genome Project Information Web site.