It’s been five whole years since I started The Microbial Menagerie and I’d like to thank each and every one of you for following along!
In the past years, you’ve seen 108 blog posts (exactly 54,755 words) covering the many ways microbes touch our lives. The blog has received 142,000 page views, from 105,000 visitors from all around the world. Thank you all!
Five years seems like a long time to keep a side-project going, but it’s been fun learning and writing about the many wonders of the microbial world and sharing that with you. Hope you will continue to stay in touch by signing up for email notifications of new blog posts (enter your email to the right if you’re on desktop, or scroll down if you’re on mobile).
Now, I’ll leave you with three cool microbial math calculations quantifying five years.
Five years = a lot of E. coli
If you gave one E. coli cell a constant fresh supply of the perfect growth medium for five years, you would end up with a lot of E. coli cells. I tried to quantify this but I could not comprehend the enormity of the numbers. These calculations assume a doubling time of 20 minutes with no mutations arising that could alter growth rates. Here goes:
In five years, this one E. coli cell would undergo 131,400 generations. That means, one cell turns into two cells, two cells turn into four cells, etc. This happens 131,400 times resulting in 2.19 x 1039555 cells. Incomprehensible right?
I next decided to see how much this would weigh. Assuming that one E. coli cell has a wet weight of 1 x 10-12 g, the one E. coli cell after 131,400 generations would weigh in at 2.19 x 1039543 g or 1.99 x 1039549 tons.
So in other words, a lot of E. coli cells.
Five years = 97 kilometers traveled
Let’s go for a more digestible calculation. How far could a bacterium travel in five years?
Thiovulum majus is a really fast bacteria, traveling a great distance of 615 micrometers in a single second. That means that if one T. majus bacterium could exist for five straight years continually swimming, it would travel 97 kilometers.
Five years = 130 batches of kombucha
A few years ago, I was on a kombucha kick. Thanks to the Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast (SCOBY), I was able to produce lots of this fermented tea drink. I loved how the SCOBY floated on top and grew and grew, giving rise to microbial “tentacles” that reached down to the bottom of the kombucha. It took about two weeks for me to make each batch of kombucha, meaning that five years would produce 130 batches of kombucha originating from the same SCOBY, with plenty of “baby” SCOBYs to give away.
I hope you’ve enjoyed these examples of microbial math! Let me know if there’s something you’d like to see on The Microbial Menagerie in the years to come.
