Preface
In autumn 1990, I had the chance to see one of the largest exhibition of Claude Monet's most famous series, at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. As Kenneth Clark explains in his famous book “Civilization,” Monet attempted a kind of color symbolism to express the changing effects of light. For example he painted a series of cathedral facades in different lights -pink, blue and yellow- which seem to me too far from my own experience. The colors of these objects depend on the physical environment, such as sunlight, snow, the time of the day, the season etc. Under different conditions, one object may show quite different properties. Who can be sure what is the absolute property? The microbial world may have the same uncertainty.
It is only three hundred years ago, Antony van Leewenhoek first observed microorganisms through his microscope. In the middle of the 19th century, Louis Pasteur conducted one of the most important experiments in the field of microbiology, as a result of which he was able to refute the theory of spontaneous generation. Alexander Fleming made his famous serendipitous discovery of the first antibiotic, penicillin in 1928 which has lengthened our average life-span. The industrial production of penicillin has resulted in the development of basic microbiology, such as physiology and genetics, as well as industrial microbiology. And 1977, only two decades ago, the first DNA sequence of the virus SV40 was determined by Maxam and Gilbert. I would like to say that the decoding of the three and a half billion year history of life has only just begun.
Not too many years ago, almost all biologists believed that life could survive only within a very narrow range of temperature, pressure, acidity, alkalinity, salinity and so on, in so called moderate environments. Nature, however, contains many extreme environments, such as acidic or hot springs, saline lakes, deserts, alkaline lakes, the ocean bed and subsurface. All of these environments would seem to be too harsh for life to survive.
In recent times, many organisms have been found in such extreme environments. These microorganisms have been called “extremophile”, the name dating from a 1974 paper by MacElroy (Biosystems 6 : 74-75 - Some comments on the evolution of extremophiles), now widely adopted as a useful‘catch-all’term. Some of these extremophiles cannot survive in so called “moderate” environments. The “moderate” environments would seem extreme for extremophiles. The idea of an extreme environment is relative, not absolute. Clearly we have been too anthropocentric in our thinking. We should, therefore, extend our consideration to other environments in order to isolate and cultivate new microorganisms.
Finding new life-forms will definitely develop basic science and new biotechnologies.
Basic science is the one common language of all human beings. We have just started to communicate with nature by using basic science. Science is just as a sheet of white paper. If Monet placed his colors on this paper, the paper would become a painting. If Beethoven wrote on the paper, the paper would become music. I am convinced that scientists will have the opportunity to create a new microbiology, if they know how to ask the microorganisms.
