Book Review

Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life

N Engl J Med 2008; 359:1970-1971October 30, 2008

Article

Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life
By Carl Zimmer. 243 pp. New York, Pantheon, 2008. $25.95. ISBN: 978-0-375-42430-4

Did you know that corn originated from weedy teosinte? Or that long before he became the first president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann worked as a biotechnologist in England, where he discovered bacteria that are capable of manufacturing acetone, an ingredient in explosives? Did you know that Jonathan Beckwith, a biologist at Harvard University, was the first person to isolate a gene? Or that cheese is traditionally made by spiking milk with rennet, an enzyme that is produced in the stomachs of cows? Or that the Industrial Revolution would probably never have happened if the threads of nuts and bolts had not been standardized in the mid-1800s? I didn't know these things. Nor did I know that the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide products is a glyphosate that was discovered by the Monsanto Company in the early 1970s, or that every year, an estimated 15 boulders from Mars crash into Earth. I learned all these things by reading Carl Zimmer's Microcosm, a treasure trove of such trivia.

Microcosm is also a biography of the bacterium Escherichia coli and an omnibus of anatomy, physiology, microbiology, molecular biology, epidemiology, therapeutics, evolution, astronomy, history, and biotechnology. It is a book of metaphors — those given to anthropomorphic characterizations of its bacterial protagonist. Zimmer's E. coli has personality. At times it is cruel, and at other times it is altruistic. It can eat, hiccup, blink, taste, hear, and smell. It can be an eavesdropper, a cheat, a wolf, a lap dog, and a plagiarist. It makes a living and yet “cannot write e-mail . . . shake its tail feathers . . . or sing across a desert at dawn.”

Microcosm is a collection of teleologic explanations and provocative theories. For example, one theory posits that bacteria sometimes produce toxins to help, rather than to harm, their animal hosts. Another suggests that when our planet was much younger, RNA viruses invented DNA. Yet another proposes that in time, data gathered in outer space will vindicate Anaxagoras, who in the 5th century b.c. proposed that life on earth arose from seeds that drifted here from elsewhere in the cosmos.

Color-Enhanced Transmission Electron Micrograph of Escherichia coli O157:H7, Showing Flagella.

In Microcosm, Zimmer endeavors to trace the origin of life to its very beginning and thereby deepen the understanding of what it means to be human. According to Zimmer, more than 98,000 viruses reside in our genome, and without them our species could not survive. Because of them, our genes and those of other species, even those of lowly E. coli, have comingled since the beginning of evolution. This theory repudiates any notion of the genetic integrity of humans or any other species. Being human, Zimmer maintains, has more to do with the workings of our minds than with our genetic constitution and is not an “inviolable essence but a complex cloud of genes, traits, environmental influences, and cultural forces.”

Microcosm is the work of a gifted science writer with a talent for simplifying complex concepts through the use of amusing metaphors. Zimmer, who is not a biologist, is occasionally off target (e.g., he dismisses the lining of our gastrointestinal tract as “essentially just an interior skin”). His pronouncements are frequently controversial. Most are well referenced, but some of the most provocative — such as, in 1969, a meteorite fell to earth with “seventy-nine kinds of amino acids lurking inside” — are not. His metaphors are intermittently accompanied by gratuitous platitudes (e.g., “simplicity can be a virtue in science”) and cryptic editorial pronouncements (e.g., “the face [of E. coli] looks back, less as a portrait than a mirror”) that cause the reader to wonder whether Zimmer is trying too hard to be erudite.

All in all, Microcosm is a phantasmagoric read that explains how our understanding of the nature of E. coli has helped to unravel the mysteries of our own nature and evolution. The book is impressive for the information it imparts and even more impressive for the ideas it provokes.

Philip A. Mackowiak, M.D.
Veterans Affairs Maryland Health Care System, Baltimore, MD 21201
philip.mackowiak@med.va.gov