THERE MUST BE A PROKARYOTE SOMEWHERE - MICROBIOLOGYS SEARCH FOR ITSELF

While early microbiologists showed considerable interest in the proble m of the natural (evolutionary) relationships-among prokaryotes, by th e middle of this century that problem had largely been discarded as be ing unsolvable. In other words, the science of microbiology developed without an evolutionary framework, the lack of which kept it a weak di scipline, defined largely by external forces. Modern technology has al lowed microbiology finally to develop the needed evolutionary framewor k and with this comes a sense of coherence, a sense of identity. Not o nly is this development radically changing microbiology itself but als o it will change microbiology's relationship to the other biological d isciplines. Microbiology of the future will become the primary biologi cal science, the base upon which our future understanding of the livin g world rests, and the font from which new understanding of it flows.