investigating how microbial diversity emerged as the evolutionary product of mutation and selection

defining the major prokaryotic inventions, those which remained and those which might have disappeared

creating awareness of the impressive diversity in metabolic activities of microbes

initiating contacts between scientific fields which are not usually combined

encouraging a rapprochement between evolutionary microbiology, microbial ecology, geochemistry and earth history

bringing together aspects of environmental and epidemiological microbiology as they relate to ecology and evolution

illustrating how microbes rule the world by showing how microbes interact to do their job optimally

applying knowledge about microbial ecology, physiology, genetics and evolution to extraterrestrial geobiology