According to TIGR evolutionary biologist Jonathan Eisen, "C. hydrogenoformans is one of the fastest-growing microbes that can convert water and carbon monoxide to hydrogen." The microbe owes this to the fact that it has at least five different forms of carbon monoxide dehydrogenase.
A novel role for Cdc14 in eukaryotes was suggested by studies of Phytophthora infestans, a eukaryotic microbe known best as the cause of the Irish Potato Famine.
In 1890 however, Roland Thaxter isolated a microbe that could cause common scab lesions, naming it Oospora scabies.
The classical example of an antibiotic discovered as a defense mechanism against another microbe is the discovery of penicillin in bacterial cultures contaminated by Penicillium fungi in 1928.
Cellulytic microbes (bacteria, protozoa, and fungi) produce cellulase, which is needed to break down the cellulose found in plant material.
Anna Kuchment in Newsweek magazine writes that toy designer Drew Oliver thought of making giant microbes on reading Richard Feynman's Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman! which described seeing a microbe in a drop of water.
Their proprietary microorganism is the Q Microbe® (Clostridium phytofermentans).
The soil sample in which the microbe turned up had been taken from Blue Rapids, Kansas, which can therefore be considered the birthplace of streptozotocin.
The title makes reference to the book Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif, which first chapter is dedicated to Dutch scientist Anton van Leeuwenhoek, "the first of the microbe hunters".
Triacsin C was discovered by Yoshida K, and other Japanese scientists, in 1982, in a culture of the microbe Streptomyces aureofaciens.
Moberg and Steinman say that he was motivated by Paul de Kruif’s book Microbe Hunters and by Sinclair Lewis’s novel Arrowsmith, as well as by his experiences with penicillin on the Liberty ships, to become a doctor and medical researcher.