Aler, Nicole Ann I.

2Bio7 November 25, 2013

Critique Paper
There are so many little things or should I say living organisms around us that
could not be seen by the naked eye and they were often neglected by people. I know
that there are bacteria around us and the only thing I know before is that they are
harmful. That they go into your food when you dropped it and make you sick. However,
after learning that they are not just bacteria, that they are not just very tiny things that
make you sick, my perspective about them shifted 360 degrees. The article There must
be a prokaryote somewhere: Microbiologys search for itself by Carl Woese made me
realize a lot of things.
There are two periods during the development of microbiology: the classical
period and the dark age. During the classical period, Haekel proposed that
microorganisms belong to the kingdom Protista. Bacteria were included in this kingdom
under the high-level group Moneres. However, blue-green alage were not included in
here because he still considered them as plants. This was contradicted by Ferdinand
Cohn. For him, all bacteria are plants. It is also in this period wherein van Niel said that
in order to fully understand what bacteria really are, its evolutionary history must be
known first. As the technology developed, microbiologists attention was turned to
molecules and microorganisms, not organisms and relationships. This was the dark
age.
Today, a lot of improvements on the field of microbiology occurred. However, we
must not forget that there are living microorganisms, the prokaryotes, around us to
which we owe a lot of important processes and even our life. Because of
endosymbiosis, photosynthesis became possible. Without this, there would be no
enough supply of oxygen for us.
It is not enough to just focus on what can be seen by the naked eye. We must
search for the things that could be found outside our comfort zone. It is certainly not
easy but understanding the basic and the root of our existence will help us to improve
what we have.
Not only new technologies are important for the evolution of microbiology. We
must keep in mind that it is the people who study it and their attitudes in towards this
field that will really matter.