What do vitamins do? Do microbes need vitamins?
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A vitamin is a complex molecule that we need in order to synthesize or use chemicals we need in our body. We can’t make collagen without Vitamin C, and without it, our tissues break down and can’t be fixed, causing scurvy. We need Vitamin K to activate certain enzymes and proteins in our blood, or else it can’t coagulate and we risk bleeding to death from any injury. Our bodies are very good at making just about anything from protein and carbs and fats that we eat, but there are a few things we can’t make enough of on our own, and those we call the vitamins.
Not all living things need the same vitamins. Most animals *can* make their own Vitamin C, and don’t require it in their diet. Microbes don’t need Vitamin K because they don’t bleed.
The definition of a vitamin is sort of made by exclusion. It’s any chemical that your body requires to live but can’t make on its own that *isn’t* one of the macronutrients (carbs, fat, protein) but is more complex than a simple “mineral” (sodium, potassium, iron, zinc, etc).
They are species dependent. For example, cats make their own Vitamin C, but they can’t make taurine on their own. Humans can make their own taurine but can’t make vitamin C.
So each bacteria species might have its own specific required chemistry to get from the environment that would count as a vitamin, and at least a few do have those needs. But they won’t necessarily line up with human vitamins in any way.
For the first part of the question (what they do):
They do various things, vitamin is not a functional category. Vitamin A for example is a raw material that is transformed into vision pigment in the eye, but it also helps turning on some genes in the bone marrow that help making immune cells. Meaning that vitamin A deficiency causes both sight impairment and immune problems.
Vitamin C is a cofactor of different enzymes (meaning it helps the enzymes to work). These enzymes are mostly involved in tissue regeneration and connective tissue build-up. That’s why vitamin C deficiency comes with loosen tissues all over the body that comes in a form of skin lesions, week gums that can’t hold the teeth, not healing wounds etc.
As you see vitamins may have different functions and their deficiency causes different problems.
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