I'm a bug man - or more precisely, a microbe man. I'm attuned to the largely invisible world of bacteria and fungi where you observe their actions by noting the effects they have, and infer their presence from such effects. When I walk my fields I entertain fantasy visions of walking on a spongy mass of wriggling, ravenous microbes. It helps that my fields - or at least those I've had the management of for a couple of years - are in fact soft and yielding since they are rich in organic matter and living material so that even when bone dry they remind some of walking on a firm mattress.

I further imagine that these microbes are my coworkers helping me to make and maintain lush pastures. That's not much of a stretch and is consistent with the view of cattle as coworkers too. Together we all have the same grand purpose though we have individual responsibilities and specialties. It's something like an invisible hand, but more like an invisible mouth since it's all about eating and excreting. Young parents in the two fisted poo wrangler phase of life probably get this better than do the dry sticks and crones. It may be that we are getting much better at such joint efforts.

Like something from a horror movie, the swarm of bacteria ripples purposefully toward their prey, devours it and moves on.

Researchers at the University of Iowa are studying this behavior in Myxococcus xanthus (M. xanthus), a bacterium commonly found in soil, which preys on other bacteria.

Despite its deadly role in the bacterial world, M. xanthus is harmless to humans and might one day be used beneficially to destroy harmful bacteria on surfaces or in human infections, said John Kirby, Ph.D., associate professor of microbiology in the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine.

"It may be that we can modify this predator-prey relationship or apply it to medically relevant situations," Kirby said. "It would be amazing if we could adapt its predatory ability to get rid of harmful bacteria that reside in places we don't want them, including in hospitals or on medical implants."

The Blob? Natural gray goo? I suspect that we should be very careful about tinkering with these bacteria.