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My fifth question is to what extent do we know about the biochemical activities in the world of bacteria?

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They are basically everywhere from human digestive system to underground.

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One cannot imagine a world without them.

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What are your thoughts on this tragedy?

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Yeah, it's astounding to me how prevalent bacteria are on our planet.

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They are everywhere and they play a vital role in ecosystems, for example.

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They play a critical role in generating the oxygen that we breathe, the photosynthetic bacteria.

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They play a critical role in nutrient cycling on the planet.

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They play a role as nucleation centers to help with precipitation.

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So they're vitally critical to ecosystems.

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Even bacteria that are disease-causing help to control the numbers of animals in ecosystems maintaining ecosystem stability.

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And one of the things that I think is interesting now is that we're learning that bacteria are a critical part of a healthy human being.

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They cover the surface of our skin.

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They line our digestive tract.

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And they're playing a number of vital roles in terms of helping us to digest important foodstuffs, keeping us healthy.

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So a healthy person has the appropriate balance of bacteria.

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And so I think this is very interesting because so often you'll hear people who are atheists, who are evolutionary biologists argue,

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well, if a creator is responsible for life, why would he have created bacteria?

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Well, the fact that bacteria are playing such an important role answers that question.

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I see bacteria as part of a creator's elegant design.

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And in fact, some of the most astounding examples of design that we see in biology are in bacterial systems.

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And what's interesting too is that we now are learning that we can use bacteria to help develop new technologies.

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So we can take the bacteria that exist in nature and use them as inspiration for new designs.

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Or we can re-engineer them and use them as these little biochemical manufacturing facilities

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that can produce incredibly expensive compounds that are medicines or have other uses that we couldn't make through chemical synthesis.

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So I see bacteria as not only reflecting a creator, but I see them as God's gift to us as human beings.