ABSTRACT
Microbiology is generally defined as the study of living organisms too small to be seen with the naked eye, the world of microorganisms or microbes. People began to refer to themselves as microbiologists to distinguish their trade from those that studied the macro world: the biologists, zoologists, plant physiologists, paleontologists, and numerous others. Microbes are largely responsible for the global cycles of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur on planet Earth. Industrial microbiology is the application of microbes in industrial processes to produce marketable quantities of desirable products. Soil microbiology is the study of microbes in the soil and their association with plants and higher animals in the rhizosphere, the zone of soil surrounding the roots of plants. Astrobiology or exobiology is a relatively new field that searches for evidence of life on other planets and moons or for alien or “non-deoxyribonucleic acid” life here on Earth.
