Week 1

Today's Topics:
o Introduction and Historical Perspectives

Homework:
Read "system of work for use of microbiology laboratories", page 19

Lecture Topic:
o Module details on WebCT (or will be)
o Attendance Requirement on practicals.
o Record of Results Booklet must be signed by a member of the teaching team at the end of each practical session.
o Coursework 1: Microbiological Problems - due 10th November. (20%)
o Coursework 2: Record of Results booklet - due 8th December (20%)
o Lab coats are now supplied.
o Impact:
• Nitrogen fixing, etc
• Food preservation, fermentation
• Disease
• Biofuels
• Bioremediation
• Microbial Mining
• Biotech - gmfoods, pharmaceuticals, gene therapy
o 20 times more bacteria than human cells in body
o Effects on civilisation
• Spread of disease in and by armies
• Urbanisation - cramped, unhygienic conditions
• World trade and travel - rapid spread of disease
• Bubonic plague - killed 25M of 100M in europe & north africa in 1 year.
• Last century ha seen massive fall in disease as killer
• 50% of children died from infectious disease by age 10 befoe C20.
o Jenner
o Pasteur
o Robert Koch - developed techniques still used today - worked with anthrax.
• Pure culture methods
• Platinum loop
• Agar (Fannie Hesse - husband worked in lab - tried for jams but was too hard; suggested he tried for cultures)
• Petri Dish (RJ Petri)
• Team confirmed 15 significant diseases caused by microbes.

o Lister - antiseptics (Koch used perchloride of mercury; this is now deprecated as it is a pollutant)
o Anton De Bary - extended to plants. (potato blight - ref famine)
o Iwanowski - identified potato mosaic virus by filtration (too small to see under optical microscope)
o Rous
o Fleming
o Evolution (ref foundation biology)
o 50's Stanley Tyler & Elso Arghoorn - fossil stromatolites.
o Prokaryotes vs Eukaryotes
o Escherichia Coli can reproduce in 20 min, in ideal conditions
o Archea - have ether linked membrane lipids - discovered by Carl Woese, in 1977.