clipped from www.scientificblogging.com

For such a slender book, Microcosm covers a wide-ranging selection of science. Zimmer begins by recapping the key events in the history of molecular biology, events in which E. coli was frequently a central player. Once scientists realized that E. coli had genes just like animals and plants, this gut bacterium gradually became one of the favorite model research systems in the then hot, new science of molecular biology. Experiments in E. coli revealed how genes are structured, how DNA is replicated, and how genes are controlled. Marshall Nirenberg and his colleagues cracked the essentially universal genetic code using cellular components from E. coli. Joshua Lederberg used bacterial 'sex' to bring the formidable tools of genetics to bacterial studies. Today, E. coli is the most well-mapped organism on the planet.