Microbiology Demystified

Microbiology Demystified
by Tom Betsy, James Keogh

Product Details
Paperback: 288 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Professional; 1 edition (May 25, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN: 0071446508

When you hear the words “germ,” “bacteria,” and “virus” you might cringe, running or the nearest sink to wash your hands. These words may bring back memories of when you caught a cold or the flu—never a pleasant experience. Germs, bacteria, viruses and other microscopic organisms are called microorganisms, or microbes for short. And as you’ll learn throughout this book, some microbes cause disease while others help fight it.

Think for a moment. Right now there are thousands of tiny microbes living on the tip of your finger in a world that is so small that it can only be visited by using a microscope. In this book we’ll show you how to visit this world and how to interact with these tiny creatures that call the tip of your finger home.

The microscopic world was first visited in the late 1600s by the Dutch merchant and amateur scientist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. He was able to see living microorganisms by using a single-lens microscope. We’ve come a long way since Van Leeuwenhoek’s first visit. Today scientists are able to see through some microbes and study the organelles that bring them to life.

It wasn’t until the Golden Age of Microbiology between 1857 and 1914 when scientists such as Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch made a series of discoveries that rocked the scientific community. During this period scientists identified microbes that caused diseases, learned how to cure those diseases, and then prevented them from occurring through the use of immunization.

Scientists were able to achieve these remarkable discoveries by using culturing techniques to grow colonies of microbes in the laboratory. Once microbes could be grown at will, scientists focused their experiments on ways to slow that growth and stop microbes in their tracks—killing the microbe and curing the disease caused by the microbe.

Culturing microbes is central to the study of microbiology. You’ll be using many of the same culturing techniques described in this book to colonize microbes in your college laboratory. We provide step-by-step instructions on how to do this.You would find it difficult to live without the aid of microbes. For example, living inside your intestines are colonies of microorganisms. Just this thought is enough to make your skin crawl. As frightful as this thought might be, however, these microbes actually assist your body in digesting food. That is, you might have difficulty digesting some foods if these microbes did not exist.

Microbes in your intestines are beneficial to you as long as they remain in your intestines. However, you’ll become very ill should they decide to wander into other parts of your body. Don’t become too concerned—these microbes tend to stay at home unless your intestines are ruptured as a result of trauma.

By the end of this book you’ll learn about the different types of microbes, how to identify them by using a microscope, and how to cultivate colonies of microbes.

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