{"id":7606,"date":"2013-07-01T07:25:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T07:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=7606"},"modified":"2013-07-01T07:27:09","modified_gmt":"2013-07-01T07:27:09","slug":"thinking-differently-about-microbes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/uncategorized\/thinking-differently-about-microbes","title":{"rendered":"Thinking differently about microbes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Through my education, I was taught that microbes were bad. We used soap and antiseptic to get rid of them. Chemicals kept us safe from these unwanted, unseen bugs. Bacteria = bad.<\/p>\n

But this is a na\u00efve understanding of the environment we live in. Not only is our environment full of microbes – of which a very small number are potentially bad, in certain circumstances – but also WE are full of them.<\/p>\n

The Human Microbiome Project has been busy mapping the microbial make-up of healthy humans, using genome sequencing to examine samples taken from 242 volunteers (you can read the press release here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Consider this: the human body contains trillions of microbes, and they outnumber the cells of our body 10:1 (although because they are tiny, they make up about 1-3 kg of our body weight). They play a vital role in our health, for example, by helping us digest food we couldn’t otherwise digest. This population includes pathogens, which may under normal conditions co-exist happily with us.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So we need to reconsider the role of microbes. They are everywhere. They are important. Most of the time they are good, and a healthy population of good microbes keeps out the bad microbes. And the bad microbes aren’t always bad. It used to be so simple when all bugs were bad!<\/p>\n

This would extend to the vineyard, where fungi and bacteria, as well as small soil animals, are everywhere, and are important members of the agroecosystem. Simplistic approaches – or interventions that inadvertently affect soil microbes – are going to have an effect on the way vines grow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Through my education, I was taught that microbes were bad. We used soap and antiseptic to get rid of them. Chemicals kept us safe from these unwanted, unseen bugs. Bacteria…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7606"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7606\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7617,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7606\/revisions\/7617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}