A New Wave Of Bacteria Is Coming Soon…

We get inside the labs that are growing beneficial bacteria to gobble up pollution, harvest waste, generate energy and help keep us healthy

- Colin Barras

We’re in trouble. Our over-reliance on fossil fuels and our taste for foods with a high carbon footprint is causing disruptive climate change. Our throwaway society has flooded the land and seas with plastic pollution. And we face a growing public health crisis triggered by the rise of disease-causing microbes that we cannot kill with antibiotics.

Now for the good news. The last few years have brought promising evidence that we might be able to pull carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere and slow the pace of climate change, that we have the potential to grow high-quality protein without the large carbon footprint, and that we can clean up our pollution and blunt the impact of antibiotic resistance. The common element in all these potential breakthroughs? Bacteria. As unlikely as it might sound, our future health and happiness might be secured by these humble microbes.

HUMAN HEALTH

Beneficial bugs that heal the body

Bacteria can be terrible for human health. They trigger deadly diseases including tuberculosis and cholera. As a consequence, bacteria-killing antibiotics have been called one of the greatest discoveries of the 20th Century: penicillin alone has saved an estimated 200 million lives over the last 80 years.