MICROPARA

• Microbiology is the study of microbes.
• Individual microbes can be observed only with the use of various types of microscopes.
• Biology is the study of living organisms, but microbiology includes the study of certain nonliving entities as well as certain living organisms.
• Microbiology can be defined as the study of microbes.
• Microbes are ubiquitous, meaning they are everywhere.
• The term microbiology was first applied to bacteria in the nineteenth century to explain disease causing cells that grew quickly.
• Microbes are essential in the field of genetic engineering.
• Scientists who specialize in the field of phycology (or algology) study the various types of algae.
• In genetic engineering, a gene or genes from one organism (e.g., from a bacterium, a human, an animal, or a plant) is/are inserted into a bacterial or yeast cell.
• Those who specialize in the study of fungi, or mycology, are known as mycologists.
• Explore the area of protozoology – the study of protozoa and their activities.
• The drug he developed was called salvarsan, and was an arsenic compound that was effective against syphilis.
• Virologists also study prions and viroids, acellular infectious agents that are even smaller than viruses.
• Many become genetic engineers who transfer genetic material (deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA) from one cell type to another.
• A scientist who specializes in bacteriology is a person who studies the structure, functions, and activities of bacteria.
• Pathogens cause two major types of diseases: infectious diseases and microbial intoxications.
• Candidates for the first microbes on Earth are archaea and cyanobacteria.
• The Ebers papyrus, which is the oldest medical text, was written around 1500 BC.
• Smallpox occurred in China around 1122 BC.
• Richard J. Petri developed the Petri dish in which microbial cultures could be grown and manipulated.
• Fanny Hesse developed the use of agar as a solidifying agent for microbiological media.
• Joseph Lister's procedures included handwashing, sterilizing instruments, and dressing wounds with carbolic acid (phenol).
• Hans Christian Gram developed the Gram stain, a stain technique that could be used to separate two major groups of disease causing bacteria.
• Alexander Fleming, a Scottish physician, discovered penicillin in 1928.
• Edward Jenner, a British Physician, reported the use of material scraped from the skin of an individual infected with cowpox to immunize a child against smallpox in 1796.
• Alexander Fleming noticed that mold growing on one of his culture plates inhibited the growth of bacteria there, and eventually isolated the substance responsible.
• Paul Ehrlich, a German physician, developed the first effective cure for a bacterial disease around 1910.
• Joseph Lister devised methods to prevent microbes from entering the wounds of his patients, a procedure known as antiseptic surgery.
• Epidemics of plague occurred in Rome in 790, 710, 640 BC and in Greece around 430 BC.
• There are early accounts of rabies, anthrax, dysentery, smallpox, ergotism, botulism, measles, typhoid fever, typhus fever, diphtheria, and syphilis.
• Ignaz Philip Semmelweis began using antiseptic procedures to prevent "childbirth infection" or puerperal fever, a serious and often fatal disease associated with infection contracted during delivery, during the 1840s.
• During the 1860s, Joseph Lister, an English surgeon, reasoned that surgical infection (sepsis) might be caused by microorganisms.
• Syphilis first appeared in Europe in 1493 and was carried to Europe by Native Americans who were brought to Portugal by Christopher Columbus.
• Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination, microbial fermentation and pasteurization.
• Robert Koch also proved that microorganisms caused disease.
• He invented the first single lens microscope and discovered the “invisible world of microorganisms”.
• He performed the swan - neck flask experiment and invented Pasteur pipet.
• Louis Pasteur changed the belief that diseases were caused by black spirits but instead they are caused by microorganisms.
• Robert Koch used a sequence of procedures called “Koch’s Postulates” to describe the epidemiology of disease, the disease causation process.
• Robert Koch was a celebrated German physician and pioneering microbiologist.