I Contain Multitudes

Question 1

Name of bacteria which perform photosynthesis in a similar manner to plants? + example

Answer 1

Oxygenic photosynthetic bacteria

• contain light harvesting pigments, absorb CO2 and release oxygen

Eg. Cyanobacteria (only known ones to date)

Question 2

How was the oxygenated world we live in today created?

Answer 2

Single cells organisms releasing oxygen as a waste product

Question 3

Name of the current geological age?

Answer 3

Anthropocene

Question 4

Microbiocene

Answer 4

Ancient and ongoing epoch relating to microbes

Question 5

Quote about animals and bacteria

Answer 5

‘Animals May be evolutions icing but bacteria really are the cake’ - Andrew Knoll

Question 6

Average number of microbial cells to human cell

Answer 6

Ten million microbial cells for every human cell

Question 7

Which bacteria caused the plague

Answer 7

Yersinia Pestis

Question 8

Fauna

Answer 8

All of the animal life present at a particular time

Question 9

Wallace line

• date
• what he did
• what he found

Answer 9

1854

Alfred Wallace began 8 year trek through islands of Malaysia and Indonesia

Collected over 125 000 species documenting what they were and WHERE he found them.

Extracted patterns and realised change in fauna between Asia and Australasia - as if departed by an invisible line hence ‘Wallace line’

Question 10

The study of the microbiome is similar to what Wallace did …

Answer 10

Cataloguing which species are found in which animals and where those animals are found. Scientists doing what Wallace and Darwin did buy on a smaller scale.

(Collect microbes and sequence genes)

Question 11

Who advocated Darwin’s theory of evolution

Answer 11

Thomas Henry Huxley

Question 12

What did Darwin NOT do

Answer 12

He didn’t neglect microbes. He did research them but there was only so much he could do with the tools available

Question 13

What kind of thinks did Darwin discover on his excursion on the HMS beagle?

Answer 13

Fossilized bones of giant ground sloths

Armadillos in Argentina

Marine iguanas

Giant tortoises

Question 14

How did the theory of evolution come about?

Answer 14

Wallace on an excursion (islands of Malaysia and Indonesia)

Darwin went on his excursion

Darwin started forming ideas of natural selection

Wallace proposed theory of evolution which matched Darwin’s unpublished ideas he had kept secret for 20 years.

Prompted Darwin to publish ‘On the Origin of Species’

Darwin and Wallace worked today ether it improve the explanation of natural selection

Question 15

Which bacteria rule the skin

Answer 15

Staphylococcus

Propionibacterium

Question 16

Which bacteria rule the gut

Answer 16

Genus bacteroides

Question 17

Which bacteria dominate the vagina

Answer 17

Lactobacillus

Question 18

Which bacteria rule the mouth

Answer 18

Streptococcus

Question 19

Baby microbiome, vagina, succession (how long), Bif and Bac

Answer 19

Baby colonized with mother’s vaginal microbes then takes 1-3 years for microbiome to reach adult state (ecological succession of early life microbiome)

Bifidobacterium (milk digesting) give way to bacterioides (carb eaters) - not just enzymes involved with digestion: MICROBES too

Question 20

Naked mole rats

Answer 20

• resistant to cancer
• live in any like colonies with queens and workers
• insensitive to pain
• terrible at controlling body temperature

Question 21

Animals sharing habitats often have…

Answer 21

Similar microbiomes despite evolving independently

Question 22

What did Knight wonder about meerkats and their mother’s milk?

Answer 22

Some meerkats attack each other’s pups and abandon them so zookeepers raise them

However these meerkats develop heart problems when they are older for unknown reasons

Speculates because they can’t get mothers milk with specific bacteria that help infants digest special sugars

Question 23

If distorted microbiomes cause health conditions then …

Answer 23

Manipulating them could restore health

Question 24

Binturong

Answer 24

(Bearcat)

Scent glands either side of anus that secret popcorn scent - likely produces by bacteria

Question 25

Human genome vs microbiome

Answer 25

The human genome is similar across people however the microbiome varies a lot

Question 26

Name of bacteria about the size of a full stop

Answer 26

Epulopiscium fishelsoni

Lives in gut of brown surgeon fish

Question 27

Who was the first person to see a Protozoa and how did he do it?

Answer 27

Anthony Van Leeuwenhoek (1632)

Made lenses - create single lens models that magnifies up to 270 times more than Hooke’s which was 20-50 times.

Looked at water from Berkelse Mere (lake near Dleft) and saw ‘little green clouds’

Question 28

Protozoa

Answer 28

Phylum comprises of single cell microorganisms - amoebas, flagellates, ciliates, sporozoans

(Belong to protoctista kingdom)

Question 29

What did Leewenhoeuk first call the microorganisms he saw in rainwater

Answer 29

‘Animalcules’

Question 30

What was the first account of antisepsis

Answer 30

1683

Observed bacteria in plaque on his teeth for the first time

Added wine vinegar to scar pins and saw the ‘animalcules’ died

Question 31

How did Carl Linnaeus classify microbes?

Answer 31

Began classifying life in 1730s, putting microbes into genus ‘chaos’ meaning formless

Question 32

What’s the difference between how Aristotle classified animals based on how Linnaeus did?

Answer 32

Aristotle - based on where they lived

Linnaeus - animals morphology

Question 33

Louis Pasteur

Answer 33

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