microorganism
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AI overview
A microorganism is a living thing too small to see with the naked eye, such as the bacteria shown here magnified 10,000 times. Microorganisms matter because they are found everywhere in nature and have major effects on human health, food production, and the environment.
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Article
33 sectionsContents
- Discovery
- Ancient precursors
- Early modern
- 19th century
- Classification and structure
- Evolution
- Archaea
- Bacteria
- Eukaryotes
- Protists
- Fungi
- Plants
- Ecology
- Extremophiles
- Plants and soil
- Symbiosis
- Applications
- Food production
- Water treatment
- Energy
- Chemicals, enzymes
- Science
- Warfare
- Soil
- Human health
- Human gut flora
- Disease
- Hygiene
- In fiction
- See also
- Notes
- References
- External links
thumb|upright=1.35|A Colony (biology)#Microbial colonies|cluster of [[Escherichia coli bacteria magnified 10,000 times]]
A microorganism, or microbe, is an organism of microscopic size, which may exist in its single-celled form or as a colony of cells. The possible existence of unseen microbial life was suspected from antiquity, with an early attestation in Jain literature authored in 6th-century BC India. The scientific study of microorganisms began with their observation under the microscope in the 1670s by Anton van Leeuwenhoek. In the 1850s, Louis Pasteur found that microorganisms caused food spoilage, debunking the theory of spontaneous generation. In the 1880s, Robert Koch discovered that microorganisms caused the diseases tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria, and anthrax.