MODULE IN GENERAL MICROBIOLOGY

Unit 1
Introduction to Microbiology

Lesson 2: Historical overview of microbiology

Introduction
The science of microbiology essentially began with development of the microscope. With this tool
came many fascinating discoveries made by pioneer scientists. The discovery of living forms that
are invisible to the naked eye was a significant milestone in the history of science in the 17 th
century. That these “invisible” entities were postulated to be responsible for the decay and diseases
observed and were subsequently proven and accurately described propelled microbiology as an
important discipline. Early on, sickness was attributed to supernatural intervention and to the sinful
nature of man. What relevant discoveries have completely changed the view of microorganisms?
In this lesson, we shall describe the key developments that contributed much to the discipline of
microbiology to its current high-technology state.

Learning Objectives
At the end of the lesson, you are expected to:
 Explain the importance of the invention of the microscope.
 Explain the concept of spontaneous generation theory
 Explain the importance of the Koch’s Postulates.
 Explain how Needham, Spallanzani, Virchow, Pasteur, Jenner, Lister, Erhlich, Fleming,
and others contributed to the field of microbiology.
 Identify renowned Filipino microbiologists and describe their contributions in the field.
 Differentiate the branches of microbiology and its areas of specialization.

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Activating Prior Learning

Microscope, pasteurization, fermentation, Koch’s postulates, penicillin, recombinant DNA
technology. These discoveries and inventions are vital and are still very relevant in modern life.
Do you recall any of the leading pioneers in microbiology and their discoveries? Let’s find out by
performing the activity below.
 Activity 1.2.1.

Match the scientists in Column A to their important contribution to the field of

microbiology in Column B. Write the letter of your answer in your notebook.

A B
1. Anton van Leeuwenhoek A. Demonstrated that tobacco mosaic
disease is caused by a virus
2. Alexander Fleming B. Proved that alcoholic fermentation is
due the activity of yeasts
3. Louis Pasteur C. Accidentally discovered the antibiotic,
penicillin, from a mold
4. Edward Jenner D. Introduced the method of vaccination
against smallpox
5. Dmitri Iwanowsky E. First to describe microorganisms by
using a simple microscope

Done? To check whether or not you got the answers correctly, go on and read the notes
below.

Core Content
I. History and Scope of Microbiology
A. Discovering the “organisms”
Who do you think first saw microorganisms? Scientists first observed microorganisms when the
first primitive microscopes were developed during the 17th century. Using a hand-crafted single-
lens microscope which can magnify 200 times, Anton von Leeuwenhoek was the first to observe
and describe microbes making some of the most important contributions in the history of biology.
He observed microscopic organisms (such as bacteria, protists, nematodes) from water samples
which he called “animalcules” as well as sperm cells and blood cells. He published his
observations of these microorganisms in the Royal Society of London’s journal Philosophical
Transactions in 1684 exposing the existence of a vast array of microscopic life to the scientific
community.
The discovery of viruses started with the construction of a bacterial filter by Charles Chamberland
in 1884. Bacterial filters are fine enough to screen bacteria but allow smaller organisms to pass
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through. In 1892, Dmitri Iwanowski reported that tobacco mosaic disease was caused by a very
small organism that can pass through fine-pored filters. But it was only in 1935 when Wendell
Stanley demonstrated that the causative organism was a virus which he called tobacco mosaic
virus (TMV). It was Martinus Beijenrinck who founded the discipline of virology with his
discovery of viruses from 1898 to 1900. He was the first to recognize that viruses are reproducing
entities that are different from other organisms. For instance, in the mosaic disease the virus could
not reproduce outside the plant but multiplied only in the growing parts of the plant. In 1898,
Friedrich Loeffler and Paul Frosch identified another filterable agent as the cause of foot-and-
mouth disease in cattle.
It was however, in 1982, almost a century later when Stanley Prusiner discovered another type
of infectious particle, called prion, which he described as an infectious protein that causes a
particular normal protein to alter its shape and become infectious.
 Self-Assessment Questions

1.2.1. Distinguish a virus from a prion. _______________________________________

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B. Disproving spontaneous generation
Microbiology techniques were used to disprove the long-held theory of spontaneous generation in
the 19th Century. Spontaneous generation was the belief that living things arose spontaneously
from a combination of ingredients, often including ingredients that were inorganic. This was
introduced by the famous philosopher, Aristotle who lived around 350 BC. For example, people
believed that mice arose from soiled cloth combined with wheat if the combination was left out to
sit. And this belief remained unchallenged for more than 2000 years.
Francesco Redi in 1688 was the first to formally challenge the theory of spontaneous generation
by performing an experiment with flies. He hypothesized that maggots come from flies. To test
his hypothesis, he placed meat in three separate jars. One jar was left open, the second jar was
tightly sealed and the third jar was covered with a netting. He observed that maggots developed in
the open jar and that flies were laying eggs on the meat. No maggots developed in the sealed jar.
And he observed that maggots developed on the netting of the third jar and flies laid eggs on the
netting. He concluded that if raw meat was protected from flies, the formation of maggots was
prevented.
However, Redi’s findings were contradicted by John Needham in 1748 who showed that even
after boiling mutton broth and pouring into sealed containers growth of microbes still occurred.
This observation was used by Needham to support the spontaneous generation of microbes. But
then Needham’s work was challenged by Lazzaro Spallanzani and in 1776 when he showed that
sealed containers that were boiled do not produce microbes. However, this did not convince the
critics of Spallanzani who discounted his experiments by saying that boiling the broth might have

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somehow destroyed some "vital principle" in the broth making it unfit for spontaneous
generation.
Although Redi was able to disprove spontaneous generation, but because of the conflicting
observations made by Needham and Spallanzani, belief in the theory persisted up to the 19th
century. This started to change when in 1862 Louis Pasteur rigorously disproved spontaneous
generation with his elegant Swan Neck flask experiments using microorganisms. He demonstrated
that broth boiled in a swan-neck flask was protected from airborne microorganisms by the curve
in the flask’s neck, which trapped invading microorganisms. He demonstrated that boiling broth
in a swan-necked flask was also able to keep liquids sterile for an extended period of time. The
flask with curved neck allowed air into the flasks while dust and other particulate matter remained
in the neck. He was able to show that no microbial growth resulted unless the neck is removed to
allow air in or flasks were tipped to allow the broth into the neck. These experiments demonstrated
convincingly that spontaneous generation was not occurring. And these put the controversy on
spontaneous generation to rest. Pasteur’s ingenious swan neck experiments also offered proof to
the concept of biogenesis proposed by Rudolf Virchow in 1858 who hypothesized that living cells
arise only from preexisting living cells (“omne vivum e vivo”).
 Self-Assessment Questions

1.2.2. Distinguish spontaneous generation from biogenesis. _______________________

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1.2.3. What essential elements of Louis Pasteur’s swan neck experiments were not
satisfied by John Needham’s experiment that could have disproved the spontaneous
generation theory earlier? _____________________________________________
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C. The Germ theory of disease

In the early times, people thought that disease was divine punishment for an individual’s sins or
crimes committed. But later on they began to realize that microorganisms could cause disease.
The first proponents of the idea that invisible organisms caused disease were Lucretius (B.C.) and
Girolamo Fracastoro (1546). Fracastoro was credited with the first written allusions to the germ
theory of disease when he wrote about seminaria morbis - seeds of disease which can pass from
one individual to another. Agostino Bassi in 1835 showed that silkworm disease affecting the
silkworm moth industry was due to a fungus. Several years later, Pasteur in 1865 found another
causative agent of silkworm disease which is a protozoan. In the 1860s, Joseph Lister applied the
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germ theory in treating patients in the hospitals. He was able to show that aseptic surgical
procedures reduced the frequency of wound infections. He used a solution of phenol (carbolic
acid) to treat surgical wounds as there were no disinfectants at that time. His findings proved that
microorganisms caused surgical wound infections. Decades earlier (1840s), it was noted by Ignaz
Zemelweis that physicians who do not wash their hands prior to medical procedures frequently
transmitted puerperal or “childbirth” fever from one patient to another.
The first proof that microorganisms cause diseases was provided by Robert Koch in 1876.
Through a sequence of experimental steps of relating a microbe to a disease, now famously known
as Koch’s postulates, he provided a definitive proof that Bacillus anthracis, a bacterium, caused
the disease anthrax in cows and Mycobacterium tuberculosis caused the disease We shall
encounter Koch’s postulates again in future topics.
D. Vaccination
Almost 70 years before Koch established that a specific microorganism causes anthrax, Edward
Jenner found a way to protect people from smallpox by inoculating healthy people with pox
material from cowpox-contaminated needles. He named his treatment vaccination and the
term “vaccine” is derived from the Latin word “vacca”, which means “from cows. In 1885,
Pasteur also developed the rabies vaccine while in 1890, Emil von Behring and Kitasato
Shibasaburō produced antibodies to purified toxins to protect against diphtheria and tetanus. But
it was Ilya Metchnikoff (1845-1916) who first realized that animals including human have a
defense system against infection, what we now call the immune system. He described phagocytosis
of bacteria. The protection from disease provided by vaccination (or by recovery from the disease
itself) is called immunity.
 Self-Assessment Questions

1.2.4. State the Germ Theory of Disease. ______________________________________

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1.2.5. What are Koch’s Postulates? __________________________________________

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1.2.6. Distinguish vaccination and immunity.___________________________________

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E. Discovering the effect of microbes on organic and inorganic matter

In the mid-19th century, Pasteur also made other important contributions particularly to the wine
industry. He found that microorganisms called yeasts convert the sugars in grapes to alcohol in the
absence of air. This process, called fermentation, is now used to make wine and beer. Souring
and spoilage are caused by different microorganisms, called bacteria. In the presence of air,
bacteria change the alcohol into vinegar (acetic acid). He also described lactic acid. He also
established a process fermentation used to reduce spoilage and kill potentially harmful bacteria in
these drinks by heating them just enough Pasteur’s solution to the spoilage problem was to heat
the beer and wine just enough to kill most of the bacteria that caused the spoilage. The process is
now called pasteurization.
From 1887 – 1990, Sergei Winogradsky and Martinus Beijerinck studied soil microbes and
their role in the biogeochemical cycles of sulfur, carbon, and nitrogen.

F. Advancements in the 20th century

Following the success of Koch in establishing the relationship between microorganisms and
disease, there was a rush by medical microbiologists to discover substances that could destroy
pathogenic microorganisms without harming the infected animal or human. Treatment of disease
by using chemical substances is called chemotherapy. These substances can either be naturally-
produced by bacteria and fungi (antibiotics) or synthesized in the laboratory (synthetic drugs).
Antibiotics act against other microorganisms.
The first vaccines and antibiotics were developed, and the first chemotherapeutic agents were used
to treat bacterial diseases. In 1910, Paul Ehrlich synthesized the first successful drug against
syphilis. It was an arsenic derivative which he called salvarsan. In 1932, Gerhardt Domagk
developed the first useful drug against a variety of bacterial infections, the first sulfa drug –
prontosil, a derivative of sulphanilamide. This discovery earned him the Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine for 1939. Sir Alexander Fleming (1881-1955) and Selman Waksman
(1888-1973) discovered the first relatively safe and effective antibiotics isolated from
microorganisms. Fleming discovered penicillin in the 1940s while Waksman discovered
streptomycin and a number of other antibiotics which also earned him the Nobel Prize in
Physiology or Medicine for 1952.
Using microbes as a model, many physiological and biochemical processes have been
elucidated. Moreover, many advances in molecular genetics were made using bacteria as models.
Most notable among these are the following: In 1941, George Beadle and Edward Tatum’s
experiments on the bread mold, Neurospora crassa, allowed them to propose the One Gene, One
Enzyme Hypothesis which states that each gene directs the formation of one enzyme. The
“fluctuation test” by Salvador Luria and Max Delbruck (1943) set the stage for the tremendous
advances in microbial genetics and molecular biology. Their elegant experiment showed that
mutations are spontaneous in nature. In 1944, Oswald Avery, Maclyn McCarty, and Colin
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MacLeod, provided the first evidence that genes are made of DNA. They showed that DNA (not
proteins) can transform the properties of cells, thus clarifying the chemical nature of genes. In
1961, Jacques Monod and Francois Jacob won a Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discovery of
operon and how genes regulate cell metabolism by directing the biosynthesis of enzymes.
It is undeniable that many advances in molecular biology were made by using bacteria as models.
In 1968, the first restriction enzyme, a nuclease that recognizes and cuts at specific short
sequences of DNA, was described. In 1972, scientists produced recombinant DNA molecules by
joining DNA from different species and subsequently inserting the hybrid DNA into a host cell,
often a bacterium. In 1979, insulin was synthesized using the recombinant techniques. In 1989,
Steven Rosenberg and his team performed the first human gene therapy trial when they used a
retrovirus to introduce the gene coding for resistance to neomycin into human tumor-infiltrating
lymphocytes before infusing them into five patients with advanced melanoma. And in 1995, the
first organism to have its complete genome sequenced is the Haemophilus influenzae.
A lot of discoveries have since then become publicized. You shall learn more about important
discoveries and inventions as we move on to the next lessons.
 Self-Assessment Questions
1.2.7. Distinguish fermentation and pasteurization. ______________________________
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1.2.8. Give the contribution of the following scientists:

A. Paul Ehrlich ____________________________________________________
B. Oswald Avery, Maclyn McCarty, and Colin MacLeod ___________________
_______________________________________________________________
C. Steven Rosenberg ________________________________________________

II. Branches of Microbiology

As you have learned from the topics above, microbial activities and their application are diverse.
And the science of microbiology developed several fields of specialization also emerged. The field
of microbiology as it is at present is extremely broad and microbiologists typically can specialize
in one of its many subfields. Moreover, the branches of microbiology can be classified by
taxonomy or by type of research.

By taxonomy, microbiology classifies the different microbes based on their taxonomic characters,
as follows:

1. Bacteriology: the study of bacteria

2. Mycology: the study of fungi, such as yeasts and mold
3. Phycology: the study of algae
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4. Protozoology: the study of protozoa, such as amoeba

5. Virology: the study of viruses
6. Immunology: the study of the immune system, particularly the relationships between
pathogens such as bacteria and viruses and their hosts

By type of research, microbiology can be classified as either pure (basic) or applied. The former
is the most fundamental branch, in which organisms themselves are examined in-depth to gain a
better understanding of a scientific phenomenon. In applied microbiology, research is based on
information gleaned from pure research and are used to answer specific questions or solve
problems. Some examples are shown below:

Pure (Basic) Microbiology

1. Microbial cytology: the study of microscopic and submicroscopic details of

microorganisms
2. Microbial ecology: relationship between microbes and their habitats
3. Microbial genetics: studies the mechanisms by which microorganisms inherit traits
4. Microbial physiology: the study of how the microbial cell functions biochemically
5. Microbial taxonomy: the naming and classification of microorganisms
6. Microbial systematics: the study of diversity and genetic relationship of
microorganisms
7. Cellular microbiology: a discipline bridging microbiology and cell biology
8. Molecular microbiology: studies how genetic information is carried in molecules of
DNA and how DNA directs the synthesis of proteins

Applied Microbiology

1. Agricultural microbiology: impact of microbes on agriculture

2. Food and dairy microbiology: microbes that food spoilage and food-borne diseases;
microbes that make food and drink
3. Environmental microbiology: function and diversity of microbes in their natural
environments
4. Water/Aquatic microbiology: microorganisms that are found in water.
5. Aero-microbiology: the study of airborne microorganisms
6. Medical microbiology: the study of pathogenic microbes and the role of microbes in
human illness
7. Veterinary microbiology: role of microbes in veterinary medicine or animal taxonomy
8. Industrial microbiology: commercial use of microbes to produce industrial or
consumer products and for wastewater treatment
9. Pharmaceutical microbiology: microorganisms used in pharmaceutical products such
as enzymes, vitamins, vaccines and antibiotics
10. Microbial Biotechnology: manipulation of organisms to form useful products

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 Self-Assessment Questions

2.2.1. Distinguish pure research and applied research. ___________________________

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Application
 Disproving Spontaneous Generation. Examine the diagram below and answer the
questions that follow.

Figure 1.2.3. Experiments to disprove spontaneous generation.

(https://spontaneousgeneration.weebly.com/lazzaro-spallanzani.html)

1. Which set would suggest the experiment conducted by Needham? Spallanzani?

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2. What did each experiment prove? _______________________________________

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3. What conclusion did Spallanzani generate from his experiment? _______________

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4. What is that “vital principle” being referred to by the critics of Spallanzani?

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 More Discoveries. List and describe briefly three (3) discoveries and/or inventions in the
last 10 years relevant to microbiology.
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 Know the Filipino Microbiologists. Name three (3) renowned Filipino microbiologists
and describe their important contributions to the improvement of the quality of life?
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Assessment
How well do you remember the concepts and information presented in this lesson? Take the test
below to find out.
Multiple Choice: For each question item below, there are four (4) suggested answers. Select the
correct answer and write the letter of your choice on your answer sheet.
1. Aristotle believed in spontaneous generation. What evidence supported his belief?
a. Observing “animalcules” from saliva
b. Observing living things seemingly arise from non-living matter
c. Souring of beverages
d. Belief in supernatural intervention
2. What explains why John Needham’s experiment on spontaneous generation were faulty?
a. He failed to cover the broth jar and microbes were introduced from air.
b. He did not boil the broth long enough to kill the microbes.
c. He used flasks with no microbial growth to begin with.
d. There was no problem with his methodology.
3. Who among the following pioneers in microbiology is credited for finally putting the
spontaneous generation theory to rest using broth in swan-neck flask?
a. Aristotle
b. Lazarro Spallanzani
c. Louis Pasteur
d. Jan Baptista van Helmont

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4. Which of the following developed a set of postulates for determining whether a particular
disease is caused by a particular pathogen?
a. Edward Jenner
b. Paul Erhlich
c. Robert Koch
d. Louis Pasteur
5. Who introduced the use of carbolic acid to sterilize surgical instruments and wound
dressings?
a. Joseph Lister
b. Ignaz Zemelweis
c. Ilya Metnikoff
d. Martinus Beijerinck
6. Which of the following events led to the development of microbiology as a science?
a. Development of microscope
b. Discovery of microbial activity in fermentation
c. Discovery of smallpox vaccine
d. Use of disinfectants
7. What was the purpose of the swan-necked flasks designed to disprove spontaneous
generation?
a. To kill all microbes in the broth
b. To allow multiplication of microbes in the broth
c. To prevent air from entering the flask
d. To trap the microbes and prevent them from entering the broth
8. A researcher attempts to duplicate the experiments by Iwanowski on the tobacco mosaic
virus. The researcher pours filtered juice from a plant through a filter. However, he
discovers that this filtered fluid contains both bacteria and viruses from the plant. Which
of the following could be used to explain the result?
a. The filter has pores with a diameter larger than bacteria but not larger than viruses.
b. The filter has pores larger than viruses but not larger than bacteria.
c. The filter has pores larger than both bacteria and viruses.
d. The filter has pores smaller than both bacteria and viruses.
9. Which of the following branches of microbiology studies pathogens, like SARS-CoV-2,
and how they cause human illnesses?
a. Immunology
b. Medical microbiology
c. Veterinary microbiology
d. Microbial biotechnology
10. Cagayan State University hires a microbiologist to analyze the school water supply to
determine if it is safe for human consumption. In what field of microbiology is the
microbiologist trained?
a. Environmental microbiology
b. Pharmaceutical microbiology
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c. Food microbiology
d. Aero-microbiology

Reflection
Let us pause for a moment and reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic that we are in the midst of
battling. What practices or discoveries of pioneer microbiologists are now commonplace in the
modern times and very useful in our fight to prevent spread of COVID-19? Write your thoughts
below.
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