Why study microbial communities?

If you take a random microbe from the environment and ask “What can this thing do?” you’re going to find some crazy stuff. Many will produce lifesaving drugs, a couple will generate electrical power, and some will even breathe uranium. This approach of studying individual microbes has been a mainstay of microbiology and will undoubtedly continue to produce incredible discoveries. However, with recent technological advancements another question has become more accessible and important than ever: “What can microbes do together?” The answers to this question are shaping up to be very strange. It turns out that communities of microbes can work cooperatively to save each other from antibiotics, talk to each other in a neuron-like manner, and even talk to actual neurons. These collective behaviors aren’t just academic curiosities; the entire biosphere is teeming with their practitioners. Microbes have a 3.5 billion year head-start on humanity and we’ve got a lot to learn from them!