How many rings in a bacterial circus?

My family and I recently went to a circus. It had one ring, and that was manageable. We have also been to a traditional three ring circus in the past. Personally, I felt there was too much going on at one time to enjoy all three rings at once. Each ring had skillfully trained performers doing their job for the enjoyment of the audience simultaneously. That is how a circus functions. Now imagine if you were able to observe a circus with more than 1000 rings. Imagine the complexity and the majestic choreography unfolding before your eyes. This is essentially what bacteria have been doing f0r millions of years with ease Instead of rings, these little circuses have pathways, a group of proteins/enzymes that all function together to perform a task. Like a circus, these pathways are not in isolation but instead many are performing at the same time. Even the “simplest” bacteria have over 500 pathways. Imagine trying to watch a 500 ring circus and understanding what is going on or being in charge of all 500 rings as they perform. Just because we don’t understand microbes does not make them simple, it makes us naive.

When sequencing a bacterial genome, computers and researchers try to connect all the dots. That is, they try to predict the role each gene/protein plays within that circus. For a bacterial circus with 5000 members (genes), only about one third of those can be assigned to a particular ring (pathway). This means a majority of members from a genome have a role we haven’t observe enough to classify its context. Now, imagine two thirds of KNOWN genes in KNOWN bacteria and the fact we approximately know 1% (or less) of the total number of bacterial species on, or in or above, earth. It doesn’t take long to discover that there is much more to discover in microbiology.

We as humans are beginning to utilize bacteria, or their pathways, to advance our civilization. Whether it is to clean up our polluted, toxic land or to advance medicine through fecal transplants, bacteria will play a much bigger role in the near future. Not bad for such small species. 500 rings or 2000 rings, these circuses are truly the greatest shows on earth!

A 1500 ring circus from a typical bacterium.

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