Bio150 Chapter 01 - An Invisible World Flashcards
“Microorganisms or microbes”
Very small organisms; many types are too small to see without a microscope, although some parasites and fungi are visible to the naked eye.
Ötzi the Iceman
5300yr old mummy preserved in ice in Alps. Infected with eggs of the parasite Trichuris trichiura. Also found evidence of Borrelia burgdorferi, a bacterium that causes Lyme disease
Trichuris trichiura
Parasite that lays eggs causing abdominal pain and anemia. Ötzi had this.
Borrelia burgdorferi
Bacterium that causes Lyme disease. Ötzi had this.
Fomitopsis betulinus
Fungus that has laxative and antibiotics. Ötzi was carrying this and was thought to be using it to treat his infections.
Cloaca Maxima
A giant sewer system in ancient Rome to help remove waste. Was thought to aide in reducing waterborne epidemics.
Hippocrates
Greek physician (460-370BC) “Father of Western Medicine.” Rejected idea of illnesses caused by supernatural forces. Posited that they were naturally caused.
Thucydides
Greek philosopher (460–395 BC) “Father of Scientific Theory.” Advocated for evidence-based analysis of cause-and-effect. Observed that survivors of the Athenian plague, which killed 1/3 of the population, were unaffected by those who were actively sick. This shows an early understanding of immunology.
Marcus Terentius Varro
Roman writer (116–27 BC) who proposed things we cannot see can cause diseases. “Stay away from neighborhood swamps, they’ll make you sick.”
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
Dutch (1632–1723) was first to develop lens strong enough to see microbes. Observed ‘animalcules’ which we now know were protists.
Golden Age of Microbiology
Spawned a host of new discoveries between 1857 and 1914
Louis Pasteur
French chemist (1822–1895) , showed that individual microbial strains had unique properties and demonstrated that fermentation is caused by microorganisms. He also invented pasteurization, a process used to kill microorganisms responsible for spoilage, and developed vaccines for the treatment of diseases, including rabies, in animals and humans
Robert Koch
German physician (1843–1910), was the first to demonstrate the connection between a single, isolated microbe and a known human disease. Discovered the bacteria that cause anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis
Bacillus anthracis
Bacteria that causes anthrax
Vibrio cholera
Bacteria that causes cholera
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Bacteria that causes tuberculosis
Taxonomy
classification, description, identification, and naming of living organisms
Carolus Linnaeus
Swedish (1701–1778). In 1735 published Systema Naturae, an 11-page booklet in which he proposed the Linnaean taxonomy, a system of categorizing and naming organisms using a standard format so scientists could discuss organisms using consistent terminology
Linnean taxonomy
This divided the natural world into three kingdoms: animal, plant, and mineral (the mineral kingdom was later abandoned). Within the animal and plant kingdoms, he grouped organisms using a hierarchy of increasingly specific levels and sublevels based on their similarities. The names of the levels in Linnaeus’s original taxonomy were kingdom, class, order, family, genus (plural: genera), and species.
Phylogenies
taxonomies that took into account the evolutionary relationships
Today, phylogenic analyses include what comparisons?
genetic, biochemical, and embryological comparisons
Linnaeus’s tree of life contained just two main branches for all living things:
Animal and Plant Kingdoms
Ernst Haeckel
German who proposed another kingdom, Protista, for unicellular organisms. Later proposed a fourth kingdom, Monera, for unicellular organisms whose cells lack nuclei, like bacteria.
Robert Whittaker
American, (1920–1980) who proposed adding another kingdom, Fungi, in his tree of life. Whittaker’s tree also contained a level of categorization above the kingdom level, the empire or superkingdom level to distinguish between organisms that have membrane-bound nuclei in their cells (eukaryotes) and those that do not (prokaryotes)