page_title: Human interactions with microbes
section_title: Science
hierarchical_section_title: Human interactions with microbes / Practical uses / Science
caption_attribution_description: English: Class III cabinets at the U.S. Biological Warfare Laboratories, Camp Detrick, Maryland (Photo, 1940s)
context_page_description: Human interactions with microbes include both practical and symbolic uses of microbes, and negative interactions in the form of human, domestic animal, and crop diseases.
  Practical use of microbes began in ancient times with fermentation in food processing; bread, beer and wine have been produced by yeasts from the dawn of civilisation, such as in ancient Egypt. More recently, microbes have been used in activities from biological warfare to the production of chemicals by fermentation, as industrial chemists discover how to manufacture a widening variety of organic chemicals including enzymes and bioactive molecules such as hormones and competitive inhibitors for use as medicines. Fermentation is used, too, to produce substitutes for fossil fuels in forms such as ethanol and methane; fuels may also be produced by algae. Anaerobic microorganisms are important in sewage treatment. In scientific research, yeasts and the bacterium Escherichia coli serve as model organisms especially in genetics and related fields.
  On the symbolic side, an early poem about brewing is the Sumerian "Hymn to Ninkasi", from 1800 BC.
context_section_description: Microorganisms are essential tools in biotechnology, biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology. The yeasts brewer's yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe) are important model organisms in science, since they are simple eukaryotes that can be grown rapidly in large numbers and are easily manipulated. They are particularly valuable in genetics, genomics and proteomics, for example in protein production. The easily cultured gut bacterium Escherichia coli, a prokaryote, is similarly widely used as a model organism.
caption: Scientists working with Class III cabinets at the U.S. Biological Warfare Laboratories, Camp Detrick, Maryland, in the 1940s
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