Microbiology

Microbiology is the study of organisms that are too

small to be seen by the naked eye. Can only be seen
with aid of a microscope

 A microscope is needed to see the individual cells of

microbes.
Life forms
The major groups of microbes are archeae, bacteria,
viruses, protozoa, fungi and algae.

The cognate disciplines are bacteriology.

virology, protozoology, mycology and phycology.
Microbes are best known for the
diseases they cause
Pathogen – general name for an
organism that causes a disease.
The word pathogen is used to describe all microbes that
cause disease in animals and/or plants.
Infectious Disease
An infectious disease is a clinically evident disease
resulting from the presence of pathogenic microbial
agents, including viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa,
multicellular parasites, and the aberrant proteins
known as prions.
Infectious disease= pathogen-caused disease
History of Microbiology
The microscope was available during the mid‐1600s,
and an English scientist named Robert Hooke made
key observations about microorganisms.
He observed strands of fungi among the specimens of
cells he viewed.
A Dutch merchant named Anton van Leeuwenhoek
made careful observations of microscopic organisms,
which he called animalcules. 
van Leeuwenhoek revealed the microscopic world to
scientists
He provided accurate descriptions of protozoa, fungi,
and bacteria.
After van Leeuwenhoek death in 1723, the study of
microbiology slowed down because microscopes were
rare and the interest in microorganisms was not high.
The Theory of Spontaneous Generation
• The theory of spontaneous generation stated that
microorganisms arise from lifeless matter such as beef broth.
This theory was disputed by Francesco Redi.
• He showed that fly maggots do not arise from decaying meat
(as others believed) if the meat is covered to prevent the entry
of flies.
• An English cleric named John Needham advanced
spontaneous generation, but Lazzaro Spallanzani disputed
the theory by showing that boiled broth would not give rise to
microscopic forms of life.
Louis Pasteur and the germ theory
In 1862, the great French scientist Louis Pasteur
tested the validity of a widely held belief in
spontaneous generation.
For centuries, the general population and naturalists
alike believed that a variety of organisms could arise
spontaneously, without being generated from similar,
parental organisms.
Pasteur based his experimental design on a number of
observations.
He knew that bacteria grow in open containers of meat
broth.
 He also knew that if the broth is boiled for an hour in a
sealed container that remains sealed, no bacteria will grow
in it.
Additionally, he observed that bacteria are found in
dust particles that float in the air.
With this information, Pasteur set up a definitive
experiment to test whether microbes arise from pre-
existing microbes or are generated spontaneously.
Pasteur's Experiment

1. Louis Pasteur designed a procedure to test whether sterile

nutrient broth could spontaneously generate microbial life.
To do this, he set up two experiments. In both, Pasteur
added nutrient broth to flasks, bent the necks of the flasks
into S shapes, and then boiled the broth to kill any existing
microbes.
2. After the broth had been sterilized, Pasteur broke off
the swan necks from some of the flasks, exposing the
nutrient broth within them to air from above. The
remaining flasks in were left intact.
3. Over time, dust particles from the air fell into the
broken flasks, but in the intact flasks, dust particles
remained near the tip of the swan necks. They were
unable to travel against gravity into the flasks.
4. The broth in the broken flasks quickly became
cloudy—a sign that it teemed with microbial life.
However, the broth in the unbroken flasks remained
clear. Without the introduction of dust—on which
microbes can travel—no life arose. Pasteur thus
refuted the notion of spontaneous generation.
Pasteur's experiment showed that microbes cannot
arise from nonliving materials under the conditions
that existed on Earth during his lifetime.
But his experiment did not prove that spontaneous
generation never occurred.
 Eons ago, conditions on Earth and in the atmosphere
above it were vastly different.
Indeed, conditions similar to those found on primitive
Earth may have existed, or may exist now, on other
bodies in our solar system and elsewhere.
This has led scientists to ask whether life has
originated on other bodies in space, as it did on Earth.
Pasteur’s work also encouraged the belief that
microorganisms were in the air and could cause
disease.
 Pasteur postulated the germ theory of disease, which
states that microorganisms are the causes of infectious
disease
Pasteur's attempts to prove the germ theory were
unsuccessful.
Pasteur’s Experiment
Robert Koch
“Koch’s postulates”

Criteria by which
bacteria cause a disease
(1876)
Koch’s Postulate
• The German scientist Robert Koch provided the proof by
cultivating anthrax bacteria apart from any other type of
organism.
• He then injected pure cultures of the bacilli into mice and
showed that the bacilli invariably caused anthrax.
• The procedures used by Koch came to be known
as Koch's postulates. They provided a set of principles
whereby other microorganisms could be related to other
diseases.
1. The microorganism must be found in abundance in all
organisms suffering from the disease, but not in healthy
organisms.
2. The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased
organism and grown in pure culture.
3. The cultured microorganism should cause disease when
introduced into a healthy organism.
4. The microorganism must be reisolated from the inoculated,
diseased experimental host and identified as being identical
to the original specific causative agent.
The development of microbiology
•  In the late 1800s and for the first decade of the 1900s,
scientists seized the opportunity to further develop the
germ theory of disease as enunciated by Pasteur and
proved by Koch.
• There emerged a Golden Age of Microbiology during
which many agents of different infectious diseases were
identified.
• Many of the etiologic agents of microbial disease were
discovered during that period, leading to the ability to halt
epidemics by interrupting the spread of microorganisms.
Despite the advances in microbiology, it was rarely
possible to render life‐saving therapy to an infected
patient.
 Then, after World War II, the antibiotics were
introduced to medicine.
The incidence of pneumonia, tuberculosis, meningitis,
syphilis, and many other diseases declined with the use
of antibiotics.
• Work with viruses could not be effectively performed
until instruments were developed to help scientists see
these disease agents.
• In the 1940s, the electron microscope was developed
and perfected.
• In that decade, cultivation methods for viruses were also
introduced, and the knowledge of viruses developed
rapidly.
• With the development of vaccines in the 1950s and
1960s, such viral diseases as polio, measles, mumps, and
rubella came under control.
Modern microbiology
 Modern microbiology covers many fields of human
endeavor, including:
 the development of pharmaceutical products,
the use of quality‐control methods in food and dairy
product production,
the control of disease‐causing microorganisms in
consumable waters,
 industrial applications of microorganisms
. Microorganisms are used to produce :
vitamins, amino acids, enzymes, and growth
supplements.
They manufacture many foods, including fermented
dairy products (sour cream, yogurt, and buttermilk), as
well as other fermented foods such as pickles,
sauerkraut, breads, and alcoholic beverages.
Biotechnology
• One of the major areas of applied microbiology
is biotechnology.
•  Biotechnology uses microorganisms as living factories to
produce pharmaceuticals that otherwise could not be
manufactured.
• These substances include the human hormone insulin, the
antiviral substance interferon, numerous blood‐clotting
factors and clot dissolving enzymes, and a number of
vaccines.
The Microscope and Discovery of Microorganisms

• Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) was one of the first

people to observe microorganisms, using a microscope of his
own design, and made one of the most important contributions
to biology.
• Robert Hooke was the first to use a microscope to observe
living things.
• Hooke's 1665 book, Micrographia, contained descriptions of
plant cells. Before Van Leeuwenhoek's discovery of
microorganisms in 1675, it had been a mystery why grapes
could be turned into wine, milk into cheese, or why food would
spoil.
• Van Leeuwenhoek did not make the connection between
these processes and microorganisms, but using a
microscope, he did establish that there were forms of life
that were not visible to the naked eye.
• Van Leeuwenhoek's discovery, along with subsequent
observations by Spallanzani and Pasteur, ended the long-
held belief that life spontaneously appeared from non-
living substances during the process of spoilage
• Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729–1799) found that boiling
broth would sterilize it and kill any microorganisms
in it.
• He also found that new microorganisms could settle
only in a broth if the broth was exposed to the air.
Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) expanded upon
Spallanzani's findings by exposing boiled broths to
the air in vessels that contained a filter to prevent all
particles from passing through to the growth medium.
• He also did this in vessels with no filter at all, with air being admitted
via a curved tube that prevented dust particles from coming in contact
with the broth.
• By boiling the broth beforehand, Pasteur ensured that no
microorganisms survived within the broths at the beginning of his
experiment.
• Nothing grew in the broths in the course of Pasteur's experiment.
• This meant that the living organisms that grew in such broths came
from outside, as spores on dust, rather than spontaneously generated
within the broth.
• Thus, Pasteur dealt the death blow to the theory of spontaneous
generation and supported germ theory instead
• Ferdinand Julius Cohn (January 24, 1828 – June 25, 1898) was a
German biologist.
• His classification of bacteria into four groups based on shape
(sphericals, short rods, threads, and spirals) is still in use today.
• Among other things Cohn is remembered for being the first to show
that Bacillus can change from a vegetative state to an endospore state
when subjected to an environment deleterious to the vegetative state.
• His studies would lay the foundation for the classification of
microbes and gave some of the first insights into the incredible
complexity and diversity of microbial life.
• In 1876, Robert Koch (1843–1910) established that
microbes can cause disease.
• He found that the blood of cattle who were infected
with anthrax always had large numbers of Bacillus
anthracis.
• Koch found that he could transmit anthrax from one
animal to another by taking a small sample of blood from
the infected animal and injecting it into a healthy one, and
this caused the healthy animal to become sick.
• He also found that he could grow the bacteria in a nutrient
broth, then inject it into a healthy animal, and cause
illness.
• Based on these experiments, he devised criteria for
establishing a causal link between a microbe and a disease
and these are now known as Koch's postulates.
• Although these postulates cannot be applied in all cases,
they do retain historical importance to the development of
scientific thought and are still being used today.