Biology 261 – Chapter 1

Notes
- Microbiology: study of organisms that you need a microscope to see (little living study)
o Examples: viruses (electrons), bacteria, protozoans, fungi (mold, yeast, parasite)
o Equipment used is microscopes, media that is used to grow the cultures, inoculating
loops to transfer the bacteria and autoclaves are used to sterilize media and
contaminated materials
- Mycologist: person who studies fungi
- Mold: hyphae/ spores
- Parasitology: look at eggs (ova) of the worms under microscope
- Ecology:
- Morphology: shape
- Immunology: immune system (B cells/ T cells/ antigens)
- Genetics: molecule biology
- A colony can come from just one bacteria – culture
- Pure culture: one type of organism
- Spontaneous generation: something from nothing
- Microbiology revolves around two themes:
o Understanding basic life processes
 Microbes are excellent models
o Application of that understanding to benefit of humans
 Microbes play important roles in medicine, agriculture, and industry
- Importance of microorganism
o Oldest forms of life
o Largest mass of living material on Earth even though the smallest
o Carry out major processes for biogeochemical cycles
 Bacteria donate the enzyme that start cycles
o Microorganisms are 3 ½ billion years old
o Can live in places unsuitable for other organisms
o Other life forms require microbes to survive
- Cell structure
o Cytoplasmic membrane (cell membrane): phospholipid bilayer (separates inside of the
cell from the outside environment)
 All cells have this
o Cytoplasm: inside cell (fluid the fills the cell)
o Nucleus/ nucleoid/ ribosomes: “machinery” for cell growth and function (Bacteria have
no nucleus. But circular chromosome with DNA that has genes which codes for protein
synthesis)
o Cell wall: shape and protection (present in most microbes, confers structural strength)
 Animals don’t have cell walls
 Fungi = chitin
 Plants = cellulose
 Bacteria = peptoglycon (PG)
 All sugars = glucose derived
o Flagella: movement of bacteria
o Enzymes: proteins that speed up reactions and are reused (lipase)
- The first cells
o First cells arose from nonliving material
o First self replicating entities may not have been cells
o Last universal common ancestor (LUCA): common ancestral cell from which all cells
descended
 From this cell (LUCA) branches three domains – Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya
 Bacteria: E. coli, Strep, etc
 Archaea: extreme environments (Humans most closely related to archaea)
  Eukarya: Animals, plants, fungi
 80% of Earth’s history was exclusively microbial
o Bacteria is the oldest followed by eukaryotes, algae, invertebrates, plants mammals,
and then humans
- Life on Earth through the ages
o Earth is 4.6 billion years old
o First cells appeared between 3.8 and 3.9 billion years ago
o Anaerobic bacteria and cyanobacteria (meaning that they convert carbon dioxide into
glucose giving off oxygen as a waste product) made the Earth’s atmosphere containing
oxygen
 Also nitrogen fixers (heterocyst) which take nitrogen from the atmosphere and
convert it to ammonia or some other form of nitrogen – nitrogen fixation
o The atmosphere was anoxic (without oxygen) until roughly 2 billion years ago
 Metabolisms were exclusively anaerobic until evolution of oxygen-producing
prototrophs
o Life was exclusively microbial until roughly one billion years ago
o Microbes found in almost every environment imaginable (except pure cultures)
o Majority of microbes are found in marine sub surfaces and soil
 Food, temp, pH, amount of water present, etc influences the types of
microorganisms present
 Microorganisms grown in environments they are in – acid production = decrease
pH and use nutrients
o Global estimate of 5 x 10 ^ 30 cells on Earth and contain carbon, nitrogen, and
phosphorus which when they die are recycled through the environment
o Microbial biomass is significant and calls are key reservoirs of essential nutrients
o Microorganisms can be both beneficial and harmful to humans
o Emphasis typically on harmful microorganisms (infectious diseases agents or
pathogens)
o But many more microorganisms in nature are beneficial than are harmful
o Microorganisms as disease agents – known as pathogens (they can be harmful if not
controlled or killed)
- Microorganisms on humans
o Disease: Clinical microbiology (vaccines and antibiotics are important in treatment,
cure and prevention of disease)
o Agriculture: Bacteria live in the rumens of cattle which make the cellulose enzymes
that break down the plant material that the cows eat also cows release of methane gas
 Many aspects of agriculture depend on microbial actives
 Positive impacts
o Nitrogen fixing bacteria
o Cellulose degrading microbes in the rumen
 Negative impacts
o Disease in plants and animals
o Food microbiology: microbes making fermented foods like cheese and alcoholic bev
 Negative impacts
 Food spoilage by microorganisms requires specialized preservation of many
foods
 Positive impacts
 Microbial transformation
o Dairy products (cheese, yogurt, buttermilk)
o Other food products (sauerkraut, pickles, leavened, breads, beer)
o Energy/ environment: Important in producing biofuels, which is when we use bacteria
or yeast to make ethanol. Bioremediation is when we use bacteria to clean up oil spills
or other toxic waste from the environment
 The role of microbes in biofuels production
  Methane, ethanol, hydrogen
 The role of microbes in cleaning up pollutants: bioremediation
 Microorganisms are important in energy production, including the production of
methane (natural gas), energy stored in organisms (biomass), and ethanol
o Biotechnology (genetic engineering): A gene in cloned into a bacteria undergoes
transcription and translation to produce gene product
 Use of microorganisms in industrial biosynthesis, typically by microorganisms
that have been genetically modified to synthesize products of high commercial
value
o In 1900, more people died of infections and disease; now, more people die of heart
disease and cancer
o Microorganisms and their genetic resources
 Exploitation of microbes for production of antibiotics, enzymes, and various,
chemicals
 Antibiotics are chemicals produced by one organism (mold or bacteria)
against another organism (bacterium)
 Genetic engineering of microbes to generate products of value to humans
(biotechnology)
o Microbiology as career
 Clinical medicine: medical industry
 Research and development – pharmaceutical, chemical/ biochemical,
biotechnology
 Microbial monitoring in food and bev industries, public health, government
- Historical roots of microbiology
o Robert Hooke: first to describe microbes (looked at cells and called them little boxes –
plant cells)
 Illustrated the fruiting structured of molds
o Anton van Leeuwenhoek: first to see bacteria
 Further progress required development of more powerful handheld microscope
 Lens maker
o Ferdinand Cohn: founded the field of bacteriology and discovered bacterial endospores
 Endospores: unique to bacteria; found in bacteria like bacillus and clostridia for
survival = makes them harder to kill resistant to heat, chemical, and dying)
o Bacteria are smaller than fungi so need higher power microscope
o Louis Pasteur: milk
 Discovered that living organisms discriminate between optical isomers
 Discovered that alcohol fermentation was a biologically mediated process
(originally thought to be purely chemical)
 Disproved theory of spontaneous generation (Famous experiment in which he
compared the growth of microorganisms in one flask containing sterile broth that
was exposed to the air and one containing sterile brother that was not exposed
to the air. Microorganisms grew only in the flask exposed to the air, thereby
refuting the idea that cells can arise spontaneously from nonliving material)
 Led to the development of methods for controlling the growth of
microorganisms
 Developed vaccines for anthrax, fowl cholera, and rabies
 Travidity (cloudy): sign that something grew
o Robert Koch: demonstrated the link between microbes and infectious diseases
 Identified causative agents of anthrax and tuberculosis
 Koch’s postulate purposes: proves that a disease is caused by a microbe
 Worked with things that cause anthrax
 Developed techniques (solid medias) for obtaining pure cultures of microbes,
some still in existence today
 Awarded Nobel prize for physiology and medicine in 1905 for his contributions on
tuberculosis
  Koch’s postulate today
 Can relatively easily prove Koch’s postulates for diseases when an
appropriate animal model is available
 Remain “gold standard” in medical microbiology, but not always possible to
satisfy all postulates for every infectious disease
 Animal models not always available
 Developed solid media (agar) and put it in dishes
 Actual Postulates
 The suspected pathogenic organism should be presented in all cases of the
diseases and absent from healthy animals
 The suspected organism should be grown in pure culture
 Cells from a pure culture of the suspected organism should cause disease in
a healthy animal
 The organism should be reisolated and shown to be the same as the original
- General microbiology: field that focuses on non-medical aspects of microbiology (20 th century)
o Martinus Beijerinck: developed enrichment culture technique
 Microbes isolated from natural samples in a highly selective fashion by
manipulating nutrient and incubation conditions
o Sergei Winogradsky: concept of chemolithotrophy
 Demonstrated that specific bacteria are linked to specific biogeochemical
transformations
 Proposed concept of chemolithotrophy: oxidation of inorganic compounds linked
to energy conservation
Vocabulary
- Chemolithotrophy
- Culture
- Cytoplasmic membrane
- Enrichment culture technique
- Enzyme
- Genome
- Growth
- Heterocyst
- Koch’s postulates
- Metabolism
- Microorganism
- Motility
- Nodule
- Pathogen
- Pure culture
- Spontaneous generation
- Sterile
- Genus
- Species