How far will the microbial people take us?

Audio 48:30

Detail of a course board drawn by E. Chatton showing sexual reproduction in plants.

© Arago / Sorbonne University laboratory library

By: Caroline Lachowsky

51 min

How far will the microbial world take us?

Welcome to the discovery of all these tiny, microscopic lives, invisible to the naked eye and yet essential and omnipresent on land, at sea and even in space ...

Publicity

Let's go to the discovery of an infinite world, still poorly known and for good reason ... It is invisible to the naked eye and yet essential, omnipresent, everywhere inside us, on our skin, in our body but also throughout our environment, on land, at sea and even in space!

This is the microbial world, made up of tiny, one-celled, microscopic lives, bacteria, algae, viruses and protists.

How can we take another look at this extraordinary micro-biodiversity that surrounds us and of which we are only beginning to assess the extent?

Micro-organisms and microbes are not only vectors of problems: they are also, in their incredible diversity, in their extraordinary beauty, carriers of solutions and avenues of bio-innovation

...

With

Catherine Jessus

, biologist, research director at the CNRS for the book

Les vies minuscules by Édouard Chatton

.

This is a book on protists: neither bacteria nor viruses are microscopic beings made up of a single cell.

A century ago, the researcher Édouard Chatton studied them. 

And

Laurent Palka

(by phone), protist specialist at the National Museum of Natural History for his book

Le peuple microbien

, published by Editions Quae

The microbial people by Laurent Palka and the Tiny Lives of Edouard Chatton by Catherine Jessus © Editions Quae / CNRS Editions

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