What are some microbes which are harmful and useful?

Answer 1

E. Coli is a great example. Beneficial and necessary for digestion, can be harmful in some forms (flesh eating bacteria, which is E. coli infected with a specifc phage).

Yeast is used for baking and brewing, but not much fun when it causes infections...

Retroviruses cause many diseases, but can also be used as tools for genetic engineering.

Answer 2

It partly depends on where they are, but there are microbes which have no special use, such as, well, loads, e.g. Staphylococcus aureus, Candida albicans, Vibrio cholerae, Haemophilus influenzae, Escherischia coli - all of those are basically harmful. Useful ones might be: Lactobacillus acidophilus, Bifidobacter, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Pseudomonas vitricolum, Chlorella and the one called Spirulina, which is actually not really that - the edible one. However, it isn't always so clearcut. For instance, Botulinum toxin is poisonous, but could be used to treat dystonia (permanent muscle spasms), and different strains of the same species could be more or less harmful.

Answer 3

E. coli is a bacteria that is resident in our guts. It has many beneficial uses but can also cause disease.

I suspect that most microbes have their upsides and downsides.

Answer 4

Bacteria : resident bacteria are essential in the production of vit k in the colon, they also produce members of vit b family ex: lactobacilli. harmful bacteria like staphylococcus epidermidis causes acne, sore throat, mouth sore & other skin problems but other staphylococci helps in coagulase or blood clot.
they usually causes harm when they increase in number.

Fungi are use for fermentation like cheese, other dairy products, liquor & penicillium notatum or penicillin. harmful fungi causes candidiasis & skin infections such as athlete's foot

Answer 5

bacteria and fungi