Microbes rule: microbial contributions to the envisaged bioeconomy – Public Climate School

You might want to ask what microbes can do for you and you for the microbes – The challenges of human kind are truly enormous, with a solid climate crisis made by humankind that goes hand in hand with rapid biodiversity loss and reduced food security besides many other impacts. While we focus mainly on our doings, we might should consider the role of microbes as foe and friends on our way towards a sustainable future. Microbes are omnipresent, helping us personally on a daily basis to stay healthy, while attacking us when they can. They keep the gigantic element cycles of carbon and nitrogen going, emitting the greenhouse gas methane, while producing vitamins and antibiotics for human health. That microbes contribute 50% of all oxygen (the rest is produced by plants, mainly our still existing forests), is hardly known by the public. Here, the contributions of microbes to access carbon dioxide and hence the climate crisis and to some other challenges humankind faces are highlighted. Synthetic approaches using the biochemical potential of microbes in the envisaged bioeconomy are discussed. Will microbes save us?