We've been using microbes for thousands of years to make products we need and enjoy. For example, you can thank fungi for the cheese on your cheeseburger and yeast for your bun. Cheese and bread are two microbe-made foods people have been enjoying since civilization began, only unlike our ancient ancestors, WE know that microbes are what makes bread rise and milk curdle into cheese.

Over the past 50 years, we've begun harnessing microbes to do all kinds of new work for us. Here are some examples of microbes at work in pollution control, medicine and industry.

Researchers are using bacteria that eat methane gas to clean up hazardous waste dumps and landfills. These methane-munching bacteria, or methanotrophs, (meth-an-oh-trofs) make an enzyme that can break down more than 250 nasty pollutants into harmless molecules. By piping methane into the soil, we can increase growth of the methanotrophs that normally live in the polluted soil. More methanotrophs means faster pollution break up.

Fungi and bacteria produce powerful antibiotics such as penicillin (pen-ih-sill-en) and tetracycline (teh-truh-sigh-klin). These are drugs we use to fight off nasty bacteria that cause sore throats, ear infections, diarrhea and other discomforts.

Scientists have changed, or engineered, the genetic blueprints of bacteria and yeasts to turn them into mini medicine-making factories. They stick genes for medicines they want to makesay, insulin for diabetesinto the microbial cells, as if adding new building information to the microbe's blueprint. The scientists then grow the microbes in huge containers called fermenters where they happily reproduce into billions, all making insulin.

Microbes make compounds called enzymes that we use in making hundreds of products. We grow billions of bacteria in giant fermenting tanks, like those shown here. We then break apart the bacteria to get their enzymes to make soy sauce, soda, beer, wine, cheese, infant formula, chewing gum, leather goods, paper, laundry detergent, the stone-washed look on blue jeans, etc.