I <3 Bacteria (and yeast and mushrooms)

My husband, Ken, turned me on to this great article today about bacteria, Bacteria 'R' Us.

It tells about the bacteria in a certain type of squid. The bacteria use “quorum sensing” and when they know there are enough of them, they become bioluminescent. This makes the squid invisible to predators from above. Each day the squid ejects the colony of bacteria to prevent overpopulation. This is the same thing I end up doing with the three sourdough starters I'm nursing.

The article tells about how we have more types of bacterial cells in our body than we do human cells, how bacteria organize and may even effect our thoughts.

We love bacteria at our house, and anti-bacterial anything is banned – good old-fashioned soap works well enough. Besides the three sourdough starters, I'm working on milk and water kefir, and just decanted my first batch of kombucha. It turned out perfectly. I never thought I'd be converted to kombucha, but now I'm a believer. I'm very sensitive to caffeine but had a cup of kombucha – made of black and green teas – yesterday afternoon (well past my caffeine cut off time) and slept like a baby last night. Perhaps the bacteria processed the caffeine, as well.

I have great hope for the redemption and revival of bacteria, and hope that bacteria and mushrooms will be increasingly used in daily life and for bioremediation.