Anne Madden bends creatures to her will, with the deftness of a shepherd. But Madden is a microbe wrangler—her critters cover petri dishes. Rather than merely observe bacteria and fungi, Madden sees a community ready for work. If not for fungi, bacteria-fighting penicillin or heart-saving statins would not exist. If not for bacteria, the world would not have pickles. PICKLES!

“We have to find it. We have to bring it into the lab, and then we have to convince it to do something,” Madden told the NewsHour inside a lab at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where she works as an environmental microbiologist.

These days, her experiments are buzzing, as she takes microbes—yeast—from bees and convinces them to brew beer.