ino acids for us. It is a prodigious and gratifying feat. As Margulis andSagan note, to do trially (as urers must terials to 500 degrees centigrade and squeeze to timesnormal pressures. Bacteria do it all time  fuss, and t trogen tinue toprovide us o keep tmospable. Microbes, including teria, supply ter part of t’s breathable oxygen.

    Algae and otiny organisms bubbling a about 150 billion kilos oftuff every year.

    And tic among tionin less ten minutes; Clostridium perfringens, ttle organism t causesgangrene, can reproduce in nine minutes. At suce, a single bacterium could ticallyproduce more offspring in tons in tesupply of nutrients, a single bacterial cell can generate 280,000 billion individuals in a singleday,” according to t and Nobel laureate Cian de Duve. In t about manage a single division.

    About once every million divisions, tant. Usually tant—c just occasionally terium isendoal advantage, sucy to elude or stack ofantibiotics. ity to evolve rapidly goes anotage. Bacteriasion. Any bacterium can take pieces of genetic coding from any other.

    Essentially, as Margulis and Sagan put it, all bacteria sive c occurs in one area of terial universe can spread to any ot’srato an insect to get tic coding to sprout  means t from a genetic point of vieeria iny, dispersed, but invincible.

    t anyt givettle moisture—as ed from not als in . Scientists in Australia found microbes knoivorans t livedin—indeed, could not live —concentrations of sulfuric acid