Every step we take, whether across a grassy park or down a city sidewalk, below our feet is an ecosystem teeming with life.
Thousands of microbes, invisible to the naked eye, make life function as we know it. These tiny organisms play a role in everything from the sprouting of a single flower out of the dirt to regulation of the global carbon cycle. With climate change threatening to tip these processes out of balance, better understanding microbial activity could be key to humans adapting to looming crises such as drought and disease.
The Center for Microbial Exploration (CME) at the University of Colorado Boulder, founded in 2019, highlights the growing recognition that microbiology is a crucial component of many scientific fields. Center members’ research follows microbes at play in agriculture, the Arctic and even our own bodies. Despite looking at vastly different ecosystems, these scientists all want to know the same thing: what microbes are there and what are they doing? It has taken decades to arrive at even a partial answer.
“The mysteries of the microbial world never cease to amaze. Even basic questions often remain unanswered,” said Noah Fierer, CIRES fellow and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado Boulder.
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