A New Perspective on Bacteria

A  Microbes are organisms too small to be seen by the naked eye, including bacteria, blue-green algae, yeasts, fungi, viruses, and viroids. A large, diverse group, almost all bacteria are between one and ten µm (larger ones reach 0.5 mm). Generally single-celled, with a distinctive cellular structure lacking a true nucleus, most bacterial genetic information is carried on a DNA loop in the cytoplasm with the membrane possessing some nuclear properties. There are three main kinds of bacteria – spherical, rod-like, and spiral – known by their Latin names of coccus, bacillus, and spirillum. Bacteria occur alone, in pairs, clusters, chains, or more complex configurations. Some live where oxygen is present; others, where it is absent. The relationship between bacteria and their hosts is symbiotic, benefitting both organisms, or the hosts may be destroyed by parasitic or disease-causing bacteria.

B  In general, humans view bacteria suspiciously, yet it is now thought they partly owe their existence to microbes living long, long ago. During photosynthesis, plants produce oxygen that humans need to fuel blood cells. Most geologists believe the early atmosphere on Earth contained very little oxygen until around 2½ billion years ago when microbes bloomed. Ancestral forms of cyanobacteria, for example, evolved into chloroplasts – the cells that carry out photosynthesis. Once plants inhabited the oceans, oxygen levels rose dramatically, so complex life forms could eventually be sustained. The air humans breathe today is oxygen-rich, and the majority of airborne microbes are harmless, but the air does contain industrial pollutants, allergens, and infectious microbes or pathogens that cause illness.

C  The fact is that scientists barely understand microbes. Bacteria have been proven to exist only in the past 350 years; viruses were discovered just over 100 years ago, but in the past three decades, the ubiquity of microbes has been established with bacteria found kilometres below the Earth's crust and in the upper atmosphere. Surprisingly, they survive in dry deserts and the frozen reaches of Antarctica; they dwell in rain and snow clouds, as well as inside every living creature. Air samples taken in 2006 from two cities in Texas contained at least 1,800 distinct species of bacteria, making the air as rich as the soil. These species originated both in Texas and as far away as western China. It now seems that the number of microbe species far exceeds the number of stars.

D  Inside every human being, there are trillions of bacteria with their weight estimated at 1.36 kg in an average adult, or about as heavy as the brain. Although tiny, 90% of cells in a human are bacterial. With around eight million genes, these bacteria outnumber genes in human cells by 300 times. The large intestine contains the most bacteria – almost 34,000 species – but the crook of the elbow harbours over 2,000 species. Many bacteria are helpful: digesting food; aiding the immune system; creating moisturiser; and, manufacturing vitamins. Some have highly specialised functions, like Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, which breaks down plant starch, so an infant can make the transition from mother's milk to a more varied diet. Undeniably, some bacteria are life-threatening. One, known as golden staph, Staphylococcus aureus, plagues hospitals, where it infects instruments and devours human tissue until patients die from toxic shock. Worse, it is still resistant to antibiotics.

E  Antibiotics themselves are bacteria. In 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered that a mould in his laboratory produced a chemical he named penicillin. In 1951, William Bouw collected soil from the jungles of Borneo that eventually became vancomycin. Pharmaceutical companies still hunt for beneficial bacteria, but Michael Fischbach from the University of California believes that the human body itself is a ready supply.

F  Scientific ignorance about bacteria is largely due to an inability to cultivate many of them in a laboratory, but recent DNA sequencing has meant populations can be analysed by a computer program without having to grow them. Fischbach and his team have created and trained a computer program to identify gene clusters in microbial DNA sequences that might produce useful molecules. Having collected microbial DNA from 242 healthy human volunteers, the scientists sequenced the genomes of 2,340 different species of microbes, most of which were completely new discoveries. In searching the gene clusters, Fischbach et al found 3,118 common ones that could be used in pharmaceuticals, for example, a gene cluster from the bacterium Lactobacillus gasseri, successfully reared in the lab, produced a molecule they named lactocillin. Later, they discovered the structure of this was very similar to an antibiotic, LFF571, undergoing clinical trials by a major pharmaceutical company. To date, lactocillin has killed harmful bacteria, so it may also be a reliable antibiotic.

G  Naturally, the path to patenting medicine is strewn with failures, but, since bacteria have been living inside humans for millions of years, they are probably safe to reintroduce in new combinations and in large amounts. Undoubtedly, the fight against pathogens, like golden staph, must continue, but as scientists learn more about microbes, respect and excitement for them grow, and their positive applications become ever more probable.

New Zealand home textile crafts of the 1930s to 1950s

Objects made by previous generations of women should be valued more highly

Domestic crafts do not build monuments to their makers, nor do they create wealth, and too often they have not survived. In consequence, the domestic crafts produced by mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers in New Zealand are often overlooked. But needlework should be preserved, for it helps to convey a sense of people's identity and past beliefs in these remote islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Women of previous generations expected to sew; they had to dress their families in an item when few people could afford to buy what they were capable of making. For some women this work may have been unwelcome drudgery, but for others it was an opportunity to explore their identities, beliefs, and dreams with the only means readily at hand—a needle, some thread, and a piece of fabric.

Textiles are frustrating to collect. They are fragile; they stain; they develop rust marks; they fray and rot. If they are used, they deteriorate; yet if they are merely stored, the owner does not fully enjoy the pleasure of possession. That is probably why they have not been a popular thing to collect compared to, for example, antique furniture or fine china, which are more durable investments.

It is also true that domestic crafts are seldom signed. We like signatures because we can more readily assign value—and high prices—if we can identify the marker. But most women at this time would never have considered signing their work. They were not expecting it to be seen outside their homes, where the creator's identity was never in doubt. And they probably did not even expect it to last very long.

It does not help that such work falls into the category of crafts either, rather than fine arts, because crafts are looked on too often as a poor cousin to true creativity. Worse, they are made in a domestic context, so do not belong in the consciously elevated tradition of craft objects which compete with the arts, such as furniture. If things are made to be useful, especially within the home and by ordinary housewives, we seem to have agreed they cannot be art. Why not?

It might be argued that the collector of textiles is a little like an archaeologist. Archaeology is a combination of history and detective work, and it involves treasure that is often beautiful. Likewise, digging for the past is what textile collectors do in junk shops, and the objects they find are a way of understanding the past through physical evidence.

The domestic crafts of this period, the 1930–1950s, cannot be separated from the women's magazines that were so popular at the time. The primary purpose of these publications was to allow women to glimpse how more prosperous people lived, by showing them photographs of the interiors of their homes. In these days before television, magazines provided realistic and achievable inducements to social betterment. Parallel to this, women were provided with much more down-to-earth and useful means of improving their homes in the form of printed patterns, which were readily available from fabric shops at low cost from the 1920s and 1930s onwards. Mostly, such patterns were for everyday items that fulfilled some domestic function—aprons, tea cosies, curtains, bedspreads, chair covers, and the like. With the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to distinguish this regulated tradition of needlework, governed by printed patterns, from the individual work that women dreamed up themselves and whose form and execution were reflections of their own ideals and imagination. Although both schools have their merits, it is surely the latter tradition that will provide the collector with the greatest enjoyment. Most intriguing of all is work which suggests serendipity, even an element of chance, the piece having taken on a life of its own, determined perhaps by what resources were available at the time and the skill levels of the item's maker. When it comes to needlework, flaws can be enjoyable; even failure may bring pleasure, and in this respect needlework can be contrasted with other art forms, where successful completion is paramount.

Some people collect out of a sense of nostalgia, a desire to evoke a comforting time that seems gentler than the present. But nostalgia should not always be trusted as it can be a sanitized form of history that blots out harsh reality. However, if a certain degree of nostalgia can be felt for the fabrics of the past, it is because they remind us of the care and attention with which women selected them. The texture of certain abstract patterned fabrics from the 1950s has the power to transport us all back to the dress and fabric shops of that time where women agonised over which choices to make, though they probably loved every minute of it. Old patchwork quilts in particular are evocative because they represent an unknown family's compressed history: pyjamas, ball gowns, smart summer frocks, school dresses, all thrown together, a jumble of decorative traditions, past ceremonies, and dreams. Women of the past would often keep offcuts of their dressmaking and use them for patchwork, as a means of recording their family's story for others to appreciate.

These may sound like nostalgic thoughts, but we should also remember how hard women's lives were, that family life was not always idyllic, and that having no money was no fun. Such fabrics, then, should be seen as a wish for ideals and imaginations, although both something better, a way of daydreaming about a life that would turn out well in the end.