BIOL 4140 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Rhizobia, Blood Transfusion, Terrestrial Ecosystem
Document Summary
Intro- how microbes effect us and why we should care about them. What are microbes: organisms so small that they are not easily visible without a microscope, they are diverse- bacteria, archaea, eukaryotes (fungi, protists, animal parasites), viruses, prions. Pathogens were the first to grab our attention: = microbes that cause diseases. History of microbiology- to understand how things change and develop. Broad street pump had the most cases of cholera public water pump was the source of the outbreak: anomaly: there were no cases in the broad street brewery got beer from boiled water. Classification of bacteria- ferdinand julius cohn: his classification of bacteria was based on shapes- rod, spherical, spiral, thread. Discovery of viruses, environmental microbiology: martinus beijerinck- discovery of viruses; development of enrichment culture techniques, sergei winogradsky- developing the concept of chemoautotrophy; Discovery of archaea- carl woese: based on differences in ribosomal rna, wasn"t accepted without resistance at first.
