{"id":232,"date":"2026-05-27T10:06:45","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T10:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232"},"modified":"2026-05-27T10:06:45","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T10:06:45","slug":"our-warming-planet-is-a-petri-dish-for-new-and-deadly-microbes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232","title":{"rendered":"Our Warming Planet Is a Petri Dish for New and Deadly Microbes"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

On a sweltering morning last July, Vernon Spear, a burly eighty-five-year-old with thinning gray hair, went to check a chicken-wire crab trap that was hanging from a dock in Cambridge, Maryland. Spear is a lifelong resident of the Eastern Shore, near where the Choptank River flows into the Chesapeake Bay. He lives less than fifty yards from the dock. He was pleased to find that the trap held six feisty blue crabs, a local delicacy that he likes to steam and sprinkle with Old Bay. As Spear reached in, however, he scraped his arm on some metal, drawing blood. He wasn\u2019t worried; he\u2019d been scratched many times before. But, in the hours that followed, Spear\u2019s arm began to turn violent shades of purple and red. His wife, Lea, thought it looked like he\u2019d been badly burned. Soon his arm swelled up\u2014liquid appeared to be pooling under the skin\u2014and he rushed to his local emergency room. A clinician suspected an infection of Vibrio vulnificus<\/em>, which under a microscope looks like a kidney bean with a tail. It is popularly known as flesh-eating bacteria.<\/p>\n

Read more Texas Primary Runoffs: Live Results<\/a><\/p>\n

When V. vulnificus<\/em> enters a wound, it damages blood vessels, causing them to leak plasma into surrounding tissues. The immune system tries to protect the body by calling in clotting cells to halt the leaking; in the process, the cells cut off blood flow, prompting flesh to become necrotic. The bacteria can cause shock, sepsis, and multi-organ failure. Infections that reach the bloodstream prove deadly at least fifty per cent of the time.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

A medical helicopter arrived within twenty minutes. Spear was flown to the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center, in Baltimore. There was no question that he would need surgery. Rather, his doctors wondered if they would be able to save his life. Antibiotics on their own are of limited use against a V. vulnificus<\/em> infection. The best way to control the bacteria is to cut away the affected flesh. Surgeons worked quickly to excise layers from Spear\u2019s forearm. When he regained consciousness, hours later, he was aghast. He could see into his arm; the muscle and bone were exposed. \u201cIt was just a big hole,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

For most of Spear\u2019s lifetime, infections of V. vulnificus<\/em> north of Georgia were rare. Lately, however, the bacteria have killed people as far north as New York and Rhode Island. \u201cWhat has happened is that the environment has changed,\u201d Rita Colwell, a ninety-one-year-old microbiologist at the University of Maryland, told me. It\u2019s not that the bacteria are migrating, she said. Low levels are always present where freshwater and salt water mix. But when water warms above fifty-nine degrees Fahrenheit V. vulnificus<\/em> becomes more abundant, and above seventy-seven degrees its population soars.<\/p>\n

When Colwell started sampling microorganisms in the Chesapeake Bay, in the late sixties, she occasionally heard about V. vulnificus<\/em> infections in the area. A deadly case in the eighties made the Washington Post<\/em> and the Baltimore Sun<\/em>. \u201cIt was an astounding rarity,\u201d she told me. Nowadays, about a dozen cases are confirmed in Maryland each year; the number increased by more than fifty per cent in the span of fourteen years. A 2023 study found that the season in which the bacteria are detectable now starts in early spring and extends into the fall. \u201cThis is insidious, and it\u2019s happening to us,\u201d Colwell said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Climate change affects every life-form on Earth, but we tend to focus on how it impacts certain vulnerable species: polar bears, sea turtles, corals. Microorganisms are often omitted from the story of warming, even though they far outnumber plants and animals. In 2019, an international group of thirty-three scientists warned in the journal Nature<\/em> that the \u201cunseen majority\u201d of life was being transformed by rising temperatures, and that humans would have to contend with the consequences. Microorganisms that infect us could become more common, and appear in new places. Billions of other microbe species could be affected, too. How would they respond when their environments shifted? \u201cWe\u2019re dealing with the first life on Earth,\u201d Antje Boetius, a co-author of the Nature<\/em> paper, who serves as the president and C.E.O. of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, told me. \u201cOur planet is the test tube. We make it a bit warmer, everything will change.\u201d<\/p>\n

When scientists depict all of Earth\u2019s species on a tree of life, the lineage of humans looks like a twig. Microbes\u2014biological entities that are too small to see without a microscope, including bacteria, fungi, viruses, protozoa, algae, and archaea\u2014take up most of the tree. Microorganisms are not passive occupants of our planet\u2014they are co-creators of our environment. Microscopic algae produce much of the oxygen that we breathe. Various microbes process almost all the dead plants on the planet. \u201cWithout that very basic function, we\u2019d all be sitting in a pile of leaves,\u201d Steven\u00a0D. Allison, an ecologist at the University of California, Irvine, told me. Microorganisms partner with plant roots, and with leaves that regulate the amount of carbon in the atmosphere; they are \u201cthe architects and the wardens of life on this planet,\u201d A.\u00a0Murat Eren, a microbial ecologist and computer scientist at the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity, in Germany, told me. (A soil bacterium is even responsible for making a compound called geosmin, Greek for \u201cearth\u201d and \u201codor,\u201d which generates the distinctive scent that follows rain.)<\/p>\n

What virtually all microbes have in common is that they are ubiquitous. Microbial ecologists have a saying, Boetius told me: Everything is everywhere. A single drop of seawater, for example, can contain a million microbes, including a hundred or more species of bacteria. Microbes colonize every plant and animal, living and dead; they live on frozen mountaintops, in searing volcanoes, and at the bottoms of the deepest caves and oceans. When scientists sampled clean rooms where NASA<\/em> builds spacecraft, they managed to find two hundred and fifteen bacterial strains on the floors alone. Microbes even have their own microbes.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, microbes are constantly evolving. Many bacteria divide numerous times a day\u2014and, crucially, accumulate mutations in the process. \u201cEvery division is an experiment in survival, with a slightly different genetic roll of the dice,\u201d Eren said. Different types of microbes reproduce in different ways: bacteria and archaea duplicate themselves; viruses hijack the cells of other species; and some fungi reproduce sexually, whereas others transfer their DNA by releasing spores. But all of them can gain new traits over time, just as plants and animals do\u2014only the microbes are much faster at it. (The gap between the rate of human evolution and the rate of microbial evolution, Eren said, is like \u201cthe difference between a drifting tectonic plate and an F-16 fighter jet.\u201d)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

In the late nineteenth century, William Dallinger, an English minister who experimented with microscopes, cultivated microbes called flagellates in warm water. He gradually increased the temperature to a hundred and fifty degrees, a level that once would have killed them. They adapted to such an extent that when they were put back in cooler water they died. Nearly a century later, scientists at Michigan State University bred Escherichia coli<\/em> in a stark environment that contained barely any food. More than thirty thousand bacterial generations later, an E. coli<\/em> lineage developed the ability to consume molecules known as citrates, which were previously inedible. The change was as extreme, a biological mathematician wrote, as if humans had developed the capacity to eat wood.<\/p>\n

Our bodies, in turn, are constantly adapting to the trillions of microbes that surround us. Each of us has a microbiome\u2014a universe of microorganisms living on us and in us\u2014that helps digest food, stop infections, and make chemicals that the body needs. When microbes are beneficial or benign, we say that they\u2019ve colonized us. When they are harmful, we say that they\u2019ve infected us. Even then, our bodies adjust to their presence. Our immune systems develop new defenses, trying to kill germs that might otherwise kill us. But, in an era when the microbial world is changing rapidly, plants and animals may struggle to keep up. \u201cWe always ask: How are we going to adapt to a changing world?\u201d Eren said. \u201cThe real question is: How are we going to coexist with microbes that have adapted to the new world?\u201d<\/p>\n

Spear ultimately spent eight days in the hospital. Doctors watched carefully for any further darkening of the skin, which would indicate that the V. vulnificus<\/em> infection was still spreading. The six blue crabs had been left in a pot on the stove. \u201cNever got to eat them,\u201d Spear told me.<\/p>\n

In October, I watched Spear undergo a follow-up surgery in Maryland. He was under anesthesia, covered with drapes. Only his right arm and left leg were visible. I could see the aftermath of the infection: the entire length of his forearm was shiny and pink, like prosciutto. William Chiu, an acute-care surgeon, explained that he would be covering the wound with a thin layer of Spear\u2019s own skin. (They sourced the skin from his left leg because he has a tattoo on his right.) I watched as another doctor slid what looked like a potato peeler along Spear\u2019s thigh. He then rolled the resulting strip of skin through a mesher, an instrument that cuts geometric holes into tissue so it can expand to cover a larger area. Finally, he handed the skin graft to Chiu, who delicately stretched it over Spear\u2019s arm.<\/p>\n

After the surgery, I sat with Spear and his wife in the shock-trauma unit. He had an I.V. in his arm. He still seemed stunned that dipping his hand in the local river had nearly killed him. \u201cWe\u2019ve never heard anything about not going into the water,\u201d he told me. Despite the circumstances, he was in good spirits. He and his wife shared stories they\u2019d heard about other V. vulnificus<\/em> infections. A friend had said that his brother, a waterman, lost his leg to an infection. Their electrician had told them about a man on nearby Hoopers Island who contracted a fatal infection after being nicked by a crab shell. Spear\u2019s wife worried about families who vacationed on the Eastern Shore. How would they know to avoid the water when they had open cuts or scrapes?<\/p>\n

In the middle of our conversation, Spear suddenly exclaimed, \u201cI don\u2019t believe in global warming.\u201d There was an awkward silence. I asked if he thought the weather had changed during his lifetime. He mulled this over and said, \u201cIt\u2019s warm now, and it\u2019s, what, October?\u201d He leaned back onto his pillow and exchanged a glance with his wife. \u201cWe don\u2019t have as harsh winters anymore,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

In the opening scene of \u201cThe Last of Us,\u201d a post-apocalyptic HBO series that d\u00e9buted in 2023, an epidemiologist goes on TV to share his greatest fear: that fungi will adapt to warmer and warmer temperatures. Right now, most fungi grow best between fifty-four and eighty-six degrees; the human body hovers around ninety-eight. \u201cCurrently, there are no reasons for fungi to evolve to be able to withstand higher temperatures,\u201d the epidemiologist says. \u201cBut what if that were to change?\u201d A few scenes later, an elderly woman who is infected with a fungus develops a taste for human flesh.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

After the episode aired, Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist at Johns Hopkins University and the author of \u201cWhat If Fungi Win?,\u201d was flooded with e-mails. Casadevall is perhaps best known for a theory that warm-blooded creatures are protected from fungi by a \u201cthermal barrier.\u201d Most of the microbes that infect humans are either bacteria or viruses; we\u2019re largely spared from fungal diseases. (Our immune systems also play a key role in protecting us.) To plants and cold-blooded creatures, in contrast, fungi pose grave threats. Chytrid fungi have driven more than ninety amphibian species to extinction. Ophiocordyceps camponoti-floridani<\/em>, which inspired the fungus that jumps to humans in \u201cThe Last of Us,\u201d is notorious for taking over the brains of ants, seemingly steering them away from their usual habitat and into places where the fungus can proliferate.<\/p>\n

White-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that afflicts bats, suggests what can happen when a microbe overcomes a mammal\u2019s thermal barrier. Bats survive the scarcity of winter by hibernating in caves; during this time, their bodies cool. The fungus that causes white nose, Pseudogymnoascus destructans<\/em>, thrives between fifty and sixty degrees. It starts to grow on bats\u2019 muzzles, ears, and wings while they are hibernating, often causing them to emerge from hibernation early and starve to death. \u201cBy the time you get to our temperature, you can keep out ninety-five per cent of fungal species,\u201d Casadevall told me. But in recent decades he has grown concerned that, in a fluctuating climate, fungi could jump the thermal barrier that protects humans.<\/p>\n

A relatively small number of fungal diseases already afflict us, and some of them may be spreading. Coccidioides<\/em>, a soil fungus that can cause a respiratory infection called valley fever when its spores take up residence in the lungs, needs moisture and rain to grow. California, which has experienced wetter wet seasons and drier dry seasons, saw an eightfold increase in cases between 2000 and 2020. Blastomyces<\/em>, another fungus that can infect the lungs, grows in moist soil and decomposing wood along riverbeds, but cold winters seem to kill it off. In Minnesota, where winters have warmed markedly, infections have quadrupled since 2000. The nation\u2019s largest outbreak, which occurred in Michigan and afflicted a hundred and sixty-two paper-mill workers, peaked during one of the first winters in memory when the local river reportedly didn\u2019t freeze over.<\/p>\n

In a 2010 research paper, Casadevall predicted that climate change would encourage fungi to adapt to warming, giving them new opportunities to infect humans. Months before his paper was published, a seventy-year-old woman at Tokyo Metropolitan Geriatric Medical Center came down with a stubborn and unfamiliar infection. When doctors swabbed her ears, they found an unknown fungus that they dubbed Candida auris<\/em>. (Auris<\/em> is Latin for ear.) The fungus had no problem growing at a hundred and four degrees.<\/p>\n

Casadevall hypothesized that C. auris<\/em> originally afflicted plants and began to spread to humans after it developed a heat tolerance. \u201cThere is no other explanation that anybody can think of,\u201d Casadevall said. The fungus was soon detected in patients around the world. It proved resistant to two out of three available antifungal medications, and to ammonium cleaners often used in hospitals, suggesting that efforts to kill microbes might have also helped it evolve. Infections have a mortality rate as high as sixty per cent in immunocompromised or elderly patients, whose bodies have a hard time fighting off the fungus.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

One of Casadevall\u2019s postdoctoral fellows, Daniel Smith, has documented what seems to have been fungal adaptation in real time. On a hot summer day in 2023, he smooshed yellow Starburst candies onto the sidewalk in several Baltimore neighborhoods, hoping that they would serve as a glue for microorganisms. He then dissolved the candies in saline and cultured the microbial life that had been picked up. One of his research sites was a dense city block on Fayette Street, where the sidewalk averaged a hundred and two degrees. Another was in the suburban neighborhood of Guilford, where temperatures in the shade were closer to eighty degrees.<\/p>\n

The fungi in hotter neighborhoods turned out to show marked differences. Molds and yeasts there were lighter in color, suggesting that they were producing less melanin pigmentation, which absorbs heat. Several types of fungi were found at only the hottest sites\u2014for example, a heat-resistant strain of a common yeast and several species of Cystobasidium<\/em>, which can infect immunocompromised people. One species, Cystobasidium minutum<\/em>, could grow at ninety-eight degrees. \u201cThe more the world\u2019s conditions mimic our bodies\u2019, the more likely fungi are able to overcome this thermal barrier that\u2019s protected us for millions of years,\u201d Smith told me.<\/p>\n

Read more The Revolutionary Force of Sonny Rollins<\/a><\/p>\n

In the near future, someone you know could be infected with climate-changed microbes. In 2016, Scott Lorin, the president and C.O.O. of Mount Sinai Brooklyn, in the neighborhood of Midwood, learned that three patients in his intensive-care unit had tested positive for fungus in their blood. Labs initially pointed to Candida albicans<\/em>, a treatable infection that tends to afflict people with intravenous catheters, but none of the patients had one. Something\u2019s not right, Lorin remembers thinking. A second round of tests returned a more troubling result, one that he had never seen before: Candida auris<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Lorin, an energetic physician who wears a suit as often as he wears a white coat, asked his employees to test the entire I.C.U. They were disturbed to find C. auris<\/em> spores everywhere, even in places that doctors and nurses couldn\u2019t reach: on the blinds, high up on the walls, on the ceiling. The I.C.U. had to be evacuated for three days of decontamination. The cleaning staff threw away bedding and ripped out ceiling panels.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, patients who are most likely to test positive for C. auris<\/em>\u2014those who come from care facilities or who rely on equipment such as dialysis machines or ventilators\u2014are swabbed on arrival. Anyone who tests positive is isolated on the second floor. In March, Lorin and several of his colleagues showed me around. We stood in a room that looked normal enough: beige walls, tile floors, an adjustable bed ringed by a curtain. This room was reserved for C. auris<\/em> cases. When it\u2019s occupied, hospital employees who enter are required to wear full-body protective suits. They even use disposable stethoscopes. Vani George, the director of infection prevention, told me that a patient in a room next door had just tested positive for C. auris<\/em> that morning.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

The way these rooms are disinfected between patients, Lorin said, goes \u201cbeyond any terminal clean we\u2019ve ever done in the history of the hospital.\u201d He and his colleagues have published their protocol, for other hospitals to follow. \u201cGloves, toilet paper, paper towels\u2014everything goes in the garbage,\u201d Ulanda Wills, one of the hospital\u2019s cleaners, told me. \u201cThen we sanitize the room: bleach top to bottom, the ceiling and the walls in a clockwise direction.\u201d Sometimes it takes two or three passes before the infection-prevention team gives the all-clear.<\/p>\n

We shuffled out of the room so that the head of the cleaning team could roll in an ultraviolet-light machine, called Space-1. Its four expandable arms emit enough UV radiation to break down microbial DNA; in two minutes, it can kill ninety-nine per cent of microorganisms. A window in the door began to glow neon blue. When the door opened again, I caught a whiff of what smelled like bleach and melted wax.<\/p>\n

Mount Sinai Brooklyn hasn\u2019t had a C. auris<\/em> outbreak since 2018. Yet no one who works there expects to eradicate the fungus. \u201cOnce you have the C. auris<\/em>\u00a0colonization, you\u2019re always colonized,\u201d George told me. Humans are a step behind: when microbes change, all we can do is react.<\/p>\n

One way to imagine the future of microbes is to look at their past. In March, I visited one of the world\u2019s largest collections of ice cores, at the Ohio State University\u2019s Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. Scientists have long drilled cylinders of ice out of glaciers and ice sheets in search of details about Earth\u2019s prehistory, such as ancient bubbles of air and particulates from the atmosphere. Only in the past few years did they realize that microbes were also preserved in ice cores.<\/p>\n

After zipping into a bright-orange parka, I stepped into a vast walk-in freezer that was thirty degrees below zero. My lungs tightened and my knees tensed. Long metal tubes filled with ice, some of it from glaciers that no longer exist, were stacked on rows of shelves. \u201cThese cores come from Kilimanjaro, in Africa,\u201d Lonnie Thompson, an O.S.U. paleoclimatologist, said, pointing to some tubes. \u201cThat\u2019s the only collection in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thompson has been collecting glacial ice for fifty years with his wife, Ellen, who is also a paleoclimatologist. He led me to a room where researchers examine samples\u2014it was a mere twenty-four degrees\u2014and slid out an ice core from Huascar\u00e1n, the highest tropical mountain on Earth. \u201cYou can\u2019t go any higher, can\u2019t get any colder,\u201d he said. The deepest part of the core was more than thirty thousand years old; to get it off the mountain, he\u2019d hired forty-five skilled climbers and mountaineers, as well as a helicopter. Next, he slid out a core from the world\u2019s oldest non-polar glacier: the Guliya ice cap, on the Tibetan Plateau. It contains ice that is at least seven hundred thousand years old. I could see tiny dust particles frozen inside.<\/p>\n

Virginia Rich, a microbial ecologist at O.S.U., has studied the Guliya ice with her colleague ZhiPing Zhong, focussing on samples from cold and warm periods in the past hundred and fifty thousand years. \u201cWe see a co\u00f6rdinated shift in microbiota,\u201d Rich told me outside the freezer, after we had removed our parkas. They have observed changes in the over-all diversity of microorganisms, and in which species were dominant. They can\u2019t say what consequences these changes had\u2014only that, when the climate shifted, microbe populations did, too. Another of Rich\u2019s colleagues, Matthew Sullivan, found that viral communities also fluctuated with a changing climate. For Rich\u2019s next project, she\u2019ll study a period of rapid warming in the nineteenth century\u2014the end of the Little Ice Age. \u201cOne of the big unknowns is how quickly the microbes today are going to be adapting,\u201d she said. \u201cWe will be able to say, for individual microbial species, How did they respond under warm versus cold conditions within the past two hundred years?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Down the hall, I met Brady O\u2019Connor, a microbiologist who studies Antarctic ice cores that go back at least fifty thousand years. He and his colleagues are studying species in the ice by waking them up. He has melted ice from the center of a core and put it on petri dishes, to see what grows. The risk that the resulting microbes could infect humans or animals is very low, he told me, in part because they evolved to live in such cold temperatures. I warily examined a dish that contained two beige spots, each smaller than a dime. \u201cWe don\u2019t have an I.D. on this one yet,\u201d he said, gesturing toward the spots. They had appeared in the dish the week before. In the ice, the microbes had likely been dormant, doing just enough to survive in the extremely cold environment, but now they were dividing quickly. Each spot contained millions of cells.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s become increasingly clear that some of climate change\u2019s greatest threats come not from warm places heating up but from cold places defrosting. In 2016, a Siberian outbreak of anthrax bacteria, which ultimately infected thousands of reindeer and at least seventy people, was attributed to thawing permafrost that had released dormant spores. More recently, an international team of researchers revived thirteen \u201czombie viruses,\u201d including several that infect amoebas, from Siberian permafrost. The viruses were estimated to be hundreds of thousands of years old. O\u2019Connor told me that, when glaciers melt, microbes in the ice flow into the ocean, with unpredictable impacts on the ecosystems they join. Decomposer microbes can break down biological materials, producing greenhouse gases such as methane, which traps twenty-eight times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon does. Photosynthesizers such as algae can bloom, producing oxygen but also choking out local species. \u201cThe microbes will be fine,\u201d O\u2019Connor said. \u201cThey are running the planet, and they will continue to run the planet.\u201d It\u2019s the rest of the ecosystem that may be affected.<\/p>\n

Nicoletta Makowska-Zawierucha, a microbiologist at Adam Mickiewicz University, in Poland, has documented these risks in Svalbard, Norway. In samples of runoff from melting glaciers, she found plasmids\u2014self-replicating loops of microbial DNA\u2014that were thousands of years old, meaning that they\u2019d never had contact with many organisms alive today. Arctic microbes are accustomed to living in extreme conditions, she told me, so they have become genetically tough. \u201cThey not only have genes with unknown functions but also genes with antibiotic resistance, metal-resistance genes, and biocide-resistance genes,\u201d she said. Each of these genes could make the microbes more difficult to kill. For her discovery, she was a finalist for the Frontiers Planet Prize, a million-dollar environmental award.<\/p>\n

Makowska-Zawierucha\u2019s concern isn\u2019t that microbes will be infectious in themselves but, rather, that their genetic material could change the wider microbial world in unforeseeable ways. Humans share genes vertically, from one generation to the next: we pass them to our children but not to our siblings or our friends. Microbes, in contrast, often share DNA through a process called horizontal gene transfer. They can release plasmids into the environment, enabling other microbes to scoop up useful genes\u2014for example, instructions for digesting new foods, surviving antibiotic compounds, or making particular chemicals. Some bacteria even use a hairlike appendage called a pilus to physically latch onto other bacteria, then hand off fragments of their DNA. In Svalbard, which is warming at a rate four times the global average, Makowska-Zawierucha saw glacial runoff mixing with ocean water and sewage. \u201cThis is a really dangerous mechanism,\u201d she told me. It\u2019s impossible to predict where the microbial DNA will end up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Perhaps microbes could help clean up the messes that we humans have made. Some scientists dream of capturing carbon in microbial bioreactors, or of cultivating microbes that eat methane or plastic; certain soil microbes could make crops more tolerant to drought or to heat. Raquel Peixoto, a marine scientist at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, in Saudi Arabia, has studied microbes that help corals survive in the Red Sea. Her research suggests that beneficial microbes could be transplanted onto coral reefs during heat waves, making the corals less vulnerable to bleaching and death. \u201cYou have to restore the microbiome first,\u201d Peixoto said. \u201cI don\u2019t see a future without us doing that. It starts from microbes.\u201d Microbial interventions will have to be screened for safety, Peixoto and colleagues wrote in a recent Nature<\/em> paper. Humans are just beginning to understand how microbes shape the environment, and there could be unintended consequences of trying to harness their powers.<\/p>\n

Last year, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which has traditionally worked to protect endangered plants and animals, formed its first group dedicated to cataloguing and preserving the world\u2019s microbes, recognizing them as life-forms worth saving. It will create a list of endangered microbes and where they live, and also encourage the collection of rare microbes that inhabit extreme environments such as deserts or the deep ocean. A similar effort, the Microbiota Vault, will preserve microbe species from our food supply and our digestive systems. Groups from Benin, Brazil, Ethiopia, Ghana, Laos, Thailand, and Switzerland are collecting almost two hundred fermented-food samples and more than a thousand human fecal specimens. The effort is inspired by the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which preserves thousands of species of plants: if planetary conditions change so much that a microbe disappears in the wild, humans will have a chance to bring it back.<\/p>\n

But the sheer scale of how much microbial surveillance is needed is hard to fathom. The recently created Microbe Atlas Project uses data from more than fifty thousand studies to make a map of the planet\u2019s microbiome. But the database would need to grow by orders of magnitude for it to encompass all the microbial species that are thought to exist. Eren, the computer scientist, argues that environmental microbes should be sampled around the world daily, in the same way that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gathers weather data. \u201cPeople want to manage and protect the environment, but the entity doing most of the actual biological work on the planet is evolving out from under our control and management frameworks in real time,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

During my trip to Maryland to visit Spear, I also met with Henry Sage, one of Rita Colwell\u2019s Ph.D. students at the University of Maryland, in College Park. We walked down to a tributary of the Paint Branch River, which runs along campus, and Sage delicately balanced on stones in the riverbed so that he could gather water samples. The river gurgled innocently, sunlight reflecting off its surface. It was a peaceful setting, not one that seemed dangerous at all.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Afterward, Sage e-mailed me to say that the water appeared to contain small quantities of Vibrio cholerae<\/em>, the bacteria that cause cholera. Sage will devote almost all his Ph.D. research to monitoring the Potomac River for just one family of microbes. After reading his e-mail, I thought about the billions of microbial species on Earth that are undergoing transformations, and the number of scientists who would be needed simply to understand what\u2019s happening to them.<\/p>\n

In the spring, Spear called me to check in. Nine months after his infection, he was finally done with medical treatment. He texted me a picture of his arm: the transplanted skin was slightly pinker than the rest, and I could see a pink splotch on his leg, but otherwise he had healed remarkably well. He was still wary of going back out to the water, but he thought that might change. He\u2019d been researching a pair of protective rubber gloves that are often used for muskrat hunting. \u201cWhen the weather gets warm again, I\u2019m going to want some crabs,\u201d he said, laughing.<\/p>\n

On one of my evenings in Maryland, I stopped by the Inner Harbor, in Baltimore, to get some dinner. The sun was setting, and it was warm enough that I wanted to eat outside. Perhaps I\u2019d even try blue crab. As I got out of my Uber, though, I caught a whiff of something pungent that I\u2019d noticed earlier in the day. The closer I got to the water, the more the air smelled of decay. I asked a restaurant hostess what was going on, and she told me that the harbor had recently experienced what\u2019s known as a pistachio tide. After an unseasonable autumn heat wave, oxygen-rich surface water had cooled quickly, increasing its density and causing it to sink. The water at the bottom of the harbor, which is low in oxygen and rich in sulfur-eating bacteria, had risen to the surface. Thousands of fish, shrimp, and crabs had suffocated, and the sulfur bacteria had multiplied, turning the harbor neon green. In the end, I went back to my hotel room with takeout. I closed the window tightly. I could still taste the rot in the air.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more The Kids Are Not All Right at Cannes<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cFlesh-eating\u201d bacteria is spreading. Infectious fungi are emerging. Microbiomes may never be the same. Shayla Love reports on how climate change is transforming the \u201cunseen majority\u201d of life on Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brave-new-world-dept"],"yoast_head":"\nOur Warming Planet Is a Petri Dish for New and Deadly Microbes - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Our Warming Planet Is a Petri Dish for New and Deadly Microbes - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cFlesh-eating\u201d bacteria is spreading. Infectious fungi are emerging. Microbiomes may never be the same. Shayla Love reports on how climate change is transforming the \u201cunseen majority\u201d of life on Earth.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-05-27T10:06:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"26 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=232#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=232\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\"},\"headline\":\"Our Warming Planet Is a Petri Dish for New and Deadly Microbes\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-05-27T10:06:45+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=232\"},\"wordCount\":5211,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=232#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/99d6006dff6db63e210672bb8713bf7c.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Brave New World Dept.\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=232#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=232\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=232\",\"name\":\"Our Warming Planet Is a Petri Dish for New and Deadly Microbes - City Relocation News\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=232#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=232#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/99d6006dff6db63e210672bb8713bf7c.webp\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-05-27T10:06:45+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=232#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=232\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=232#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/99d6006dff6db63e210672bb8713bf7c.webp\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/99d6006dff6db63e210672bb8713bf7c.webp\",\"width\":1280,\"height\":720},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=232#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Our Warming Planet Is a Petri Dish for New and Deadly Microbes\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/\",\"name\":\"City Relocation News\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\",\"name\":\"admin\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"admin\"},\"sameAs\":[\"http:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\"],\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?author=1\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Our Warming Planet Is a Petri Dish for New and Deadly Microbes - City Relocation News","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Our Warming Planet Is a Petri Dish for New and Deadly Microbes - City Relocation News","og_description":"\u201cFlesh-eating\u201d bacteria is spreading. Infectious fungi are emerging. Microbiomes may never be the same. Shayla Love reports on how climate change is transforming the \u201cunseen majority\u201d of life on Earth.","og_url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232","og_site_name":"City Relocation News","article_published_time":"2026-05-27T10:06:45+00:00","author":"admin","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"admin","Est. reading time":"26 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232"},"author":{"name":"admin","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4"},"headline":"Our Warming Planet Is a Petri Dish for New and Deadly Microbes","datePublished":"2026-05-27T10:06:45+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232"},"wordCount":5211,"commentCount":0,"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/99d6006dff6db63e210672bb8713bf7c.webp","articleSection":["Brave New World Dept."],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232","url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232","name":"Our Warming Planet Is a Petri Dish for New and Deadly Microbes - City Relocation News","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/99d6006dff6db63e210672bb8713bf7c.webp","datePublished":"2026-05-27T10:06:45+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/99d6006dff6db63e210672bb8713bf7c.webp","contentUrl":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/99d6006dff6db63e210672bb8713bf7c.webp","width":1280,"height":720},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=232#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Our Warming Planet Is a Petri Dish for New and Deadly Microbes"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#website","url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/","name":"City Relocation News","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/#\/schema\/person\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4","name":"admin","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/50b1ad2e498f523425ee0a8cc5180a210646db1622662a3d56cc405d3e0c346a?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"admin"},"sameAs":["http:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com"],"url":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?author=1"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}