Fundamentals of Microbiology Flashcards
What is Microbiology?
- Study of micro organisms (micro meaning small and biology meaning living things)
- e.g. bacteria, virus, fungi
Why is Microbiology important?
- Medicine
- Food and Drink production
- Agriculture
- Pharmaceutical Industry
- Genetic Engineering
How did they make pencillin?
- Penicillium mold naturally produces the antibiotic penicillium
- Scientists grew penicillium mold in fermentation tanks
- Then separated the penicillium product from the mold
- Penicillin was purified to use as an antibiotic
What are the main differences between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells?
- Nucleus and membrane bound organelles : present in Eukaryotes only
- Cell size: Eukaryotes (10-100um), Prokaryotes (less than 5um)
- Organism type: Eukaryotes are multicellular, prokaryotes are unicellular
- Ribosomes: Eukaryotes have large 80S, Prokaryotes are small 70S
What is the classification system?
- Domain
- Kingdom
- Phylum
- Class
- Order
- Family
- Genus
- Species
How are organisms named using the classification system?
- Using genus (generic) and species (specific)
- Using capital letter only for genus and in itailics
- Escherichia coli
How does antibiotic resistance spread
- Animals get antibiotics and develop resistant bacteria in the gut
- Drug resistant bacteria can remain on meat ad spread to humans
- Fertilizer containing animal faeces on crops
- Humans get antibiotics and spread to community
What are the different prokaryotic cell shapes?
- Round
- Rod
- Curved Rod
- Short Rod
- Spiral
- Long, helical
What are the different prokaryotic cell shape arrangements?
- Single (coccus)
- Pair of coccus (diplococcus)
- 4 cells arranged into a square (tetrad)
- Chain of cocci (streptococcus)
- Cluster of cocci (staphylococcus)
- Single rod (bacillus)
- Chain of rods (Streptobacillus)
What is the cell wall made of in prokaryotes?
- Peptidoglycan (murein)
How do you distinguish between gram positive and gram negative bacteria?
- Their ability to retain a dye. Expose to dye (methyl violet), wash and wash with a decolourising agent (absolute alcohol)
- Gram negative can’t retain the dye (go pink), gram positive can (go violet) as they have a thicker cell wall
What are the 2 major roles of bacteria cell wall?
- To protect the cell against osmotic rupture particularly in diluted media and mechanical damage
- To assign bacterial shapes and their subsequent division into gram positive or negative micro organisms and antigenic attributes
What is the cell wall like of gram negative bacteria?
- Have a thinner cell wall, less sturdy
- Made more complex by layer of lipoprotein, polysaccharide and phospholipid known as the outer membrane. (Between membrane and cell wall surface)
What is the cell wall like of gram positive bacteria?
- Simple in structure compared
- Comprising of several layers of peptidoglycan connected to each other by cross linkages to form rigid scaffold
- Contain acidic polysaccharides = teichoic acids. Phosphate groups impart an overall negative charge
How do bacteria grow?
- Binary fission
- Replication of DNA, membrane pinches inwards, separation of DNA and ribosomes, cell wall forms around 2 new daughter cells
What are the 4 stages of the bacterial growth curve?
- Lag phase
- Exponential growth phase
- Stationary phase
- Death phase
What is the lag phase?
- Number of cells doesn’t change
- Metabolic adjustment (trying to adapt to environment).
- Cells grow larger and are metabolically active
What is the log or exponential phase?
- Actively dividing by binary fission and numbers increase exponentially
- The medium undergoes continuous change, as nutrients are consumed and waste excreted.
- Steep increase