The Secret Life of Microbes: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Microbes apparently constitute almost 75% of the total biomass on Earth! Human beings account for a paltry 0.5 billion tons! Who is David and who is Goliath?

The viruses are on the top of the list of most populous creatures on the planet but incredibly are not listed in the Taxonomical classification of life.

Man- microbe relation is like a 'inter-life treaty' that has set certain conditions which should not be contravened. Microbial infections are seen as a biological war between man and the microbe. Yet, there are a whole lot of microbes living on different parts of our body like our gut and skin. They are called 'Normal Flora' or 'Commensals' who do something good for us and in return we are tolerant to them. A human being is really a super-organism not just made of our own type of human cells but a wide variety of microbes as well. One can call a human body as the Union of Socialist Republic of Man and Microbes (USRMM).

Microbial unicellular systems can exist in federal structures too. Such federal microbial colonies are called 'Biofilms' which behave much like multicellular life. They are deceiving us.

Microbes use a sophisticated communication system with fellow microbes. It is said that plants can interfere with microbial communication and scramble messages. This is more like our war time tactics. There are some amazing battle strategies seen in the microbial world which are described in the book. Microbes are evasive and have at their disposal a huge number of tools that will put our military technology to shame. Antibiotics that we use extensively in medical practice are microbial intellectual property.

Microbial attacks are 'biological terrorism'. The same way I can call terrorist movements are like 'social pandemics'. This book argues that real viruses are exactly like computer viruses to the letter. This book shows how microbes use incredible cyber-attack strategies to infect and subvert.

Finally, the book argues that the reason behind the never-ending microbial infection is not killing. This is more of a genetic arms race where the microbes, especially the viruses, try to propagate their genes at the expense of other life systems.