Re: Why do scientists perform culturing? Why would they want to grow them?

The reason scientists grow microscopic things is in order to study them in more detail than just by looking at them. Bacteria are very important to us in many ways. They can cause a variety of diseases for example but they are also beneficial. Scientists use bacteria to produce many pharmaceutical drugs, bacteria are used in the production of cheese, yogurt, and other foods. Bacteria are used to remove toxic chemicals contaminating the soil, they are used as a way to control predatory insects in agriculture, and also to produce many specialty chemicals. For example scientists have developed a method using bacteria to produce the blue dye used in blue jeans. In other words they are very important to many industrial, medical and agricultural applications.

All these applications require that we grow these bacteria, generally in large quantities. In order to study or improve strains of bacteria to perform a specific task better we must be able to grow them. If you have a bacterial infection the medical lab must be able to grow them in order to identify which bacterium has infected you and therefore what treatment to begin.