Microbiology and Immunology 2500A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Tetanospasmin, Lipopolysaccharide, Crystal Violet
30 Jun 2016
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Document Summary
The vast majority of microorganisms are not pathogenic. All life on the planet is related; earth is 4. 6 billion years old; life started 3. 5 billion years ago. Domains of life can be separated into these 3 branches. Archaea don"t cause disease (used to be thought of being in the same domain as bacteria, but they are vastly different) There are also viruses, but it"s debatable whether they are alive or not. But in terms of cells, proks are the most abundant between bacteria + archaea. Defining feature is the lack of a true nucleus and complex organelles. Right image: bacteria inside the cell; you can see the size difference. Haploid genome, so in general, they only have 1 gene for each of their traits; thus they can mutate those genes and can evolve to diff environments much faster than we can. As bact grow, they reproduce by binary fission.
