What do you believe is the single most important factor driving up the cost of living in Nigeria?

Microbes are hungry, all the time. They live everywhere, in enormous numbers. We might not see them with the naked eye, but they are in soils, lakes, oceans, hydrothermal vents, our homes, and even in and on our own bodies. And they don't just hang out there. They are always eating. Altogether, they eat so much that they influence the elemental cycles of the entire planet.

Many of the microbes living on our planet do their utmost to keep these elemental cycles running in perfect balance. The fact of the matter is, though, that human interventions have significantly shifted the balance of more than one of them.

This is extremely handy when it comes to cleaning our sewage water, for example. Billions of microbes in wastewater treatment plants happily gobble up all the nutrients in the water that's flushed down our drains. This reduces our risk of getting sick and helps improve surface water quality. Pretty amazing, right?

Some microbes on our planet can turn their food into our fuels. They, too, feed on waste. For four years, I have studied fuel-producing microbes that eat carbon monoxide—a highly toxic, flammable gas that is generated, among other things, during steel production. Currently, the steel industry produces approximately 2 billion tons of steel per year, and carbon monoxide comprises between 20% and 30% of their waste gases. That waste carbon monoxide is currently burned to produce carbon dioxide. It is less toxic, but still quite harmful. However, carbon monoxide-consuming microbes could turn these vast quantities of waste gas into green fuel.

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