Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Importance of biodiversity on animal
Importance of biodiversity on animal
The importance of biodiversity 5 pages
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Importance of biodiversity on animal
Microorganisms started life on Earth billions of years ago. They started the Biosphere from the formation of photosynthesis by bacterial creating an oxygen atmosphere that helped plants and animals to develop. Microbes are usually unicellular and cannot be seen by the naked eye. Without microorganism, nothing would be supported and maintained on Earth in nature and life. Microbes help keep nature’s water and soil clean by removing toxins and degrade organic matter in a form of recycling from dead animals and plants (Anon., 2014).
Species of Microorganisms can survive in different types of habitats like; any pH range (like extreme acid to extreme alkaline), growth in temperature (like hot environment of 144C to cold environments -15C), salinity range (like fresh water to sodium chloride saturation) (Mahony, 2009). Microbes have evolved into a great number of mechanisms to digest food, reproduce and finds energy. For agriculture, medicine, warfare and energy production, scientists uses these skills to create them (Noel, n.d.).
Microbe play an important part on earth ecosystems composing of oxygen, carbon and nitrogen. They can be beneficial or hazardous to nature and in Biotechnology processes.
The Importance in Nature of Microorganisms
How Microorganisms function for Nature
Microorganisms are important in nature as they consists of elements such as Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen , Nitrogen etc. to produce living material. Nutrients from these elements are important to different types of organisms. Microorganisms primary elements; Carbon, Oxygen and Nitrogen helps the earths ability to recycle the makeup of all living systems (Kenneth Todar, 2012).
Primary Production
Photosynthetic organisms are involved in primary production. ...
... middle of paper ...
...orpses into the walled city to break out diseases. Before scientists fully understood how diseases were caused by microbes, the events like the colonization of the Americas included many cases of Europeans using the smallpox virus against their native population.
Scientists in the 20th century have refined the technique in warfare by using microbes as the weapon. Biological warfare or bioterrorism was used in such wars like the two world wars, where Germany used microbial disease on their enemies and prisoners of war. Other countries started to develop their own biological weapons like “anthrax” (a type of microbe bacteria) that affects the pulmonary, gastrointestinal and cutaneous on humans and animals. Some countries still uses biological weapons programs but other countries have signed treaties to limit the use of biological weapons (Noel, n.d.)
Conclusions
Guillemin, J. (2005). Biological weapons: From the invention of state-sponsored programs to contemporary bioterrorism Columbia University Press.
Human mobility, in terms of European transcontinental exploration and colonization, began to truly flourish after the 1400s. This travel, inspired by financial motives and justified by religious goals, resulted in the European dominance and decimation of countless cultures in both the Americas and Eurasia. While at first glance it seems as though this dominance was achieved through mainly military means - European militias, like Spanish conquistadors, rolling over native tribes with their technologically advanced weapons - the reality is significantly more complex. The Europeans, most likely unknowingly, employed another, equally deadly weapon during their exploits. With their travel, they brought with them the infectious diseases of their homelands, exposing the defenseless natives to foreign malady that their bodies had no hope of developing immunities against. Because of the nature of disease and their limited knowledge about its modes of infection, the Europeans were able to dispense highly contagious and mortal illnesses while limiting their contraction of any native ones to the new territories. In short, they were able to kill without being killed. In this way, the travel of disease in conjunction with the travel of humans in a search for exotic commodities was able to limit or even halt the development of some cultures while allowing others to flourish at exponential rates.
Smallpox, a deadly disease introduced to the Americas by Spanish soldiers, infected the non-immune natives who died rapidly after exposure (Ehrlich, 253). This epidemic swept through the Aztec population, decreasing numbers from twenty-five million to six million (Ponting, 230). The European invasion of the Aztec civilization is just one of many examples of how European expansion affected the world. For centuries, Europeans were the leaders of expansion and exploration in many areas of the world. However, expansion of other, less researched civilizations, such as the Aztecs, occurred on a much smaller scale.
The Spread of Disease In the New World The extraordinary good health of the natives prior to the coming of the Europeans would become a key ingredient in their disastrous undoing. The greatest cause of disease in America was epidemic diseases imported from Europe. Epidemic diseases killed with added virulence in the " virgin soil" populations of the Americas. The great plague that arose in the Old World never emerged on their own in the western hemisphere and did not spread across oceans until Columbus' discovery.
The introduction of Old World diseases was a substantial catalyst in the building of American colonial societies. Diseases such as smallpox devastated the native people’s populations. According to one estimate, within the span of the 16th century, the native population of central Mexico was reduced to about 700,000 from at least 13 million. (The Earth and Its Peoples, 475) Other regions were similarly affected by the disease and others such as measles, typhus, influenza, and malaria. These diseases, in effect, cleared the way for European settlers, although, in a somewhat gruesome fashion.
Microbes from Europe introduced new diseases and produced devastating epidemics that swept through the native populations (Nichols 2008). The result from the diseases brought over, such as smallpox, was a demographic catastrophe that killed millions of people, weakened existing societies, and greatly aided the Spanish and Portuguese in their rapid and devastating conquest of the existing American empires (Brinkley 2014). Interaction took place with the arrival of whites and foreigners. The first and perhaps most profound result of this exchange was the imp...
In her book, Dorothy Crawford gives biographies of the history of microbes which have brought humans diseases on a large scale. These include epidemics like yellow fever, tuberculosis, smallpox, acute respiratory syndrome, bubonic plague, syphilis HIV, the Black Death, malaria and cholera. It is worth to point out that her work is up to date because most of these microbes are still with us in this era. Crawford uses the historical bibliography of humans experience with microbes to show a fact that microbes shaped our culture through infection, disease, and pandemic. At the same time, the ever changing human culture has also largely influenced the evolutionary nature of microbes.
...standing the nature of relationship between the residing microbes inside human cells and about their function is very important to put an end to this war and to live in peace with the natural organisms that are benefitting human body and their survival has become our primary importance.
Transportation and migration has been important to Homo sapiens since the time of the hunter-gatherer. Humans have used the different methods of transportation since this time for a number of reasons (i.e. survival in the case of the hunter-gatherer, to spread religion, or in order to search for precious minerals and spices). What few of these human travelers failed to realize is that often diseases were migrating with them. This essay will look at the spread of the disease smallpox. In the following I hope to reveal the history of smallpox as well as why it devastated the New World.
The great explorations and subsequent migrations of Europeans to the Americas in the 15th-18th centuries opened up those entire continents to the fatal impact of the infectious diseases of Europe. European conquests owed a good deal of their success to the effects of disease on the indigenous peoples, especially smallpox in the Americas. Before Spanish conquest of the New World, there was no sickness or great health related issues that Natives were forced to face. That all changed, however, when European explorers, Spanish conquistadors in particular, unknowingly brought the deadly disease of smallpox into Latin America. A recollection of days before the Spanish by an Indian of the Yucatan from the book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel shows just how disease free natives were before the Spanish arrival: “There was then no sickness; they had no aching bones; they had then no high fever; they had then no smallpox; they had then no burning chest; they had then no abdominal pain; they had then no consumption; they had then no headache. At that time the course of humanity was orderly. The foreigners made it otherwise when they arrived here.” Then, after the Spanish came to the New World and spread smallpox to the natives, over 95% of them were killed. The Taino population of Hispaniola that was once estimated to be as large as 8 million went virtually extinct. Central Mexico’s population went from 15 million in 1519 to 1.5 million a century later. ...
Bacterial fossils have been discovered that date back 3.5 billion years ago. There are over 5,000 different species of bacteria known, many of which are harmful or pathogenic (i.e. can cause disease) and some of which are beneficial and can have many uses, for example, the bacterial species Lactobacillus is used in the production of cheese and yoghurt. The bacteria Bifidobacterium adolescentis is used for yoghurt making and Brevibacterium aurantiacum is used for cheese making. Also yeast is used in the production of beers and alcohols like wine and it also plays a role in bread rising. As well as bacteria being used for food production there are also many types of bacteria used in medicine production with nearly a different bacteria used for each different disease contractible in humans, for example the bacteria Moraxella lacunta is used to produce medicine for conjunctivitis and Klebsiellapneumoniae would be used to produce medicine for pneumonia.
Microorganism is a living thing that cannot be seen by naked eye and is so small in size. Microorganism usually can be seen through microscope because microscope have the ability to see small thing using various magnification. The examples of microorganism are bacteria, fungi, protozoa, algae and virus. Among all of the microorganisms, bacteria have the greatest advantages in preserving food and beverages. Bacteria are generally harmless but can produce enzymes that can alter the structure the food. In extreme cases, bacteria can secrete toxic substances that can cause the food to spoil.
Bacterial cells, like plant cells, are surrounded by a cell wall. However, bacterial cell walls are made up of polysaccharide chains linked to amino acids, while plant cell walls are made up of cellulose, which contains no amino acids. Many bacteria secrete a slimy capsule around the outside of the cell wall. The capsule provides additional protection for the cell. Many of the bacteria that cause diseases in animals are surrounded by a capsule. The capsule prevents the white blood cells and antibodies from destroying the invading bacterium. Inside the capsule and the cell wall is the cell membrane. In aerobic bacteria, the reactions of cellular respiration take place on fingerlike infoldings of the cell membrane. Ribosomes are scattered throughout the cytoplasm, and the DNA is generally found in the center of the cell. Many bacilli and spirilla have flagella, which are used for locomotion in water. A few types of bacteria that lack flagella move by gliding on a surface. However, the mechanism of this gliding motion is unknown. Most bacteria are aerobic, they require free oxygen to carry on cellular respiration. Some bacteria, called facultatibe anaerobes can live in either the presence or absence of free oxygen. They obtain energy either by aerobic respiration when oxygen is present or by fermentation when oxygen is absent. Still other bacteria cannot live in the presence of oxygen. These are called obligate anaerobes. Such bacteria obtain energy only fermentation. Through fermentation, different groups of bacteria produce a wide variety of organic compounds. Besides ethyl alcohol and lactic acid, bacterial fermentation can produce acetic acid, acetone, butyl alcohol, glycol, butyric acid, propionic acid, and methane, the main component of natural gas. Most bacteria are heterotrophic bacteria are either saprophytes or parasites. Saprophytes feed on the remains of dead plants and animals, and ordinarily do not cause disease. They release digestive enzymes onto the organic matter. The enzymes breakdown the large food molecules into smaller molecules, which are absorbed by the bacterial cells. Parasites live on or in living organisms, and may cause disease. A few types of bacteria are Autotrophic, they can synthesize the organic nutrients they require from inorganic substances. Autotrophic bacteria are either photosynthetic or Chemosynthetic. The photosynthetic bacteria contain chlorophyll that are different from the plant chlorophyll. In bacterial photosynthesis, hydrogen is obtained by the splitting of compounds other than water.
In this assignment I am going to explain the 5 different social benefits of micro-organisms. The areas I am going to talk about are as follows;
Studies have shown that there are bacteria and fungi with certain strains that live in soil. When they are applied to the seeds, they can aid crops by invigorating plant growth or by decreasing the damage created from plant pathogens bred from the soil. Another example is the bacterial species, Mycorrhiza. It is a fungus, which is able to form a union with a majority of land plants. When this action occurs, that symbiotic relationship assists to increase uptake by the root system to about 90 percent. This in turn helps the plant take in water and nutrients from deep inside the soil. It also allows the activation of genes and physiological changes in the plant which helps them to survive drought circumstances. Other microbes are also able to lift a plant 's resistance to bugs. A larger focus on microorganisms colonizing our plants and sharing a symbiotic relationship with them would greatly improve yields and lessen the need for costly fertilizers and pesticides. Information such as this would be very useful for students in college who are interested in businesses such as