UNIT I- HISTORICAL ROOTS

Question 1

BRIEF HISTORY

1530-Girolamo Fracastoro-

Answer 1

proposed that epidemic diseases are caused by transferrable tiny particles “spores”

Question 2

1665-Robert Hooke

Answer 2

published Micrographia, a book describing observations made with microscopes and telescopes

Question 3

1676 Antonie van Leewenhoek

Answer 3

saw tiny organisms in water– the first bacteria observed by man

Question 4

1768 Lazzaro Spallanzi

Answer 4

proposed that microbes move through the air and that they could be killed through boiling

Question 5

1810 Nicholas Appert

Answer 5

discovered that bacteria could not grow in foods in air-tight cans.

Question 6

1835 Agostino Bassi

Answer 6

made the important generalization that many diseases of plants, animals, and man are caused by animal or vegetable parasite.

Question 7

1861 Louis Pasteur

Answer 7

introduced the terms aerobic and anaerobic in describing the growth of yeast at the expense of sugar in the presence or absence of oxygen.

Question 8

1876 Robert Koch

Answer 8

discovery of anthrax bacillus in 1876 launched the field of medical bacteriology.

Question 9

1884 Hans Christian J. Gram

Answer 9

develops a dye system for identifying bacteria (the Gram stain)

Question 10

LAYING FOUNDATION

1886 Theodore Escherich

Answer 10

describes a bacterium which he called”bacterium coli commune” and which was later to be called Escherichia coli. A strain he isolated in 1886 is added to the collection upon its founding (NCTC 86)

Question 11

1887 Julius Petri

Answer 11

invents the agar-coated glass dish for culturing bacteria; earlier attempts at culturing involved potato slices and gelatin.

Question 12

1890 Robert Koch

Answer 12

provides proof of germ theory by injecting pure cultures of the Anthrax bacilli into mice.

Question 13

1900 Almwroth Wright

Answer 13

isolates NCTC 160 Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serotype Typhi from the spleen of a typhoid patient during the Boer War. His wartime experiences later lead him to persuade the armed forces to produce 10 million vaccine doses for WWI troops in Northern France

Question 14

1915 Private Ernst Cable,

Answer 14

Isolation of the very first bacterial strain registered in the collection. NCTC 1 is a strain of Shigella flexneri recovered from Private Ernst Cable, a WWI soldier who died from dysentery. It is resistant to penicillin and erythromycin even though it was isolated before the discovery of antibiotics

Question 15

1920 frederick William Andrewes

Answer 15

NCTC is established to “provide a trustworthy source of authentic bacteria for use in scientific studies”. frederick William Andrewes deposits the first cultures

Question 16

ADVENT OF ANTIBIOTICS

1920 Selman Waksman and Albert Schatz

Answer 16

lead a systematic effort to screen soil bacteria for antimicrobial compounds. NCTC later acquires the Streptomyces griseus strain (NCTC 4523) from which they isolated streptomycin

Question 17

1928 Alexander Fleming

Answer 17

accidentally discovers penicillin. He returns from vacation and notices that a culture plate left lying out had become overgrown with staphylococci colonies, except where mold was growing. He explores further after his former assistant Merlin Price reminds him, “that’s how you discovered lysozyme”. Over the next 20 years, Fleming deposits 16 samples with NCTC, including a sample of Haemophilus influenza isolated from his own nose in November 1935

Question 18

1930s NCTC

Answer 18

NCTC introduces freeze-drying of samples to ensure longetivity and streaming storage and shipment

Question 19

1930s Fritz Kauffman and Phillip White

Answer 19

co- develop a scheme for classifying salmonellae by serotype

Question 20

1942 Florey and Chain

Answer 20

contribute three Bacillus strains (NCTC 6431, 6432, and 6474) thought to produce ‘ antibacterial substances active against the Staphylococcus’ demonstarting the reserachers were even then seeking antibiotics beyond penicillin.

Question 21

1947 Edward Tatum and Joshua Lederberg

Answer 21

produce the first gene map of E. coli K12 (NCTC 10538). Despite being one of the most intensively studied organisms in the 20th century, no one definitively knows why it is called “K12”.

Question 22

MARSHALLING SCIENCE FOR PUBLIC HEALTH

1947 NCTC

Answer 22

NCTC focus shifts from a general microbial collection to bacteria of medical or veterinary interest.

Question 23

1949 NCTC

Answer 23

begins a 10-year effort to characterize every organism in the collection.

Question 24

1953 Betty Constance Hobbs

Answer 24

Pioneering food safety microbiologist Betty Constance Hobbs publishes a study establishing Clostridium perfringes as the cause of many outbreaks of food poisoning. She eventually deposits more than 20 NCTC strains of bacteria associated with food-borne illness.

Question 25

1961 Samuel Cowan and Kenneth Steel

Answer 25

NCTC curator Samuel Cowan and Kenneth Steel publish “Diagnostic Tables for the Common Medical Bacteria’ in the Journal of Hygiene. Demand is so great the journal reprints and distributes them in pamphlet form. The work forms the basis of Cowan & Steel’s Manual for the identification of Medical Bacteria, first published in 1965 and a bench-top staple for years to come.

Question 26

1969 Don Brenner and colleagues

Answer 26

Don Brenner and colleagues establish DNA hybridization as a more reliable basis for classifying clinical isolates of Enterobacteriaceae. He uses the new method to replace type strains with more representative specimens and identify numerous new microbial species, including Moelleralla wisconsensis (NCTC 12132), Leminorella grimonti (NCTC 12152), Enterobacter asburiae (NCTC 12123), and Citrobacter braakii (NCTC 13630).

Question 27

1977 Gilbert and Sanger

Answer 27

independently develop methods to determine the exact sequence of DNA molecules

Question 28

1981 European Culture Collection’s Organization

Answer 28

The European Culture Collection’s Organization, of which NCTC is a member, is established.

Question 29

1982 Barry Marshall

Answer 29

Future Nobel Prize winner Barry Marshall drinks a culture of the Helicobacter pylori (NCTC 11638 and 11639) to prove his theory that most stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria.

Question 30

GENOMICS ERA

2003 Watt Webb and Harold Craighead

Answer 30

Cornell University scientists led by Watt Webb and Harold Craighead publish the first report of using arrays of zer-mode waveguides for single molecule sequencing

Question 31

2011 PacBio, foodborne hemolytic- uremic syndrome,

Answer 31

PacBio ships its first commercial SMRT Sequencing system, introducing scientists to the long-read sequencing platform that will ultimately become the gold standard for generating complete, closed microbial genomes. The largets recorded outbreak of foodborne hemolytic- uremic syndrome, eventually linked to German-grown sprouts, occurs in Europe. The organism repsonsible, a Shiga toxic E. coli (NCTC 13562).

Question 32

2014 NCTC and Wellcome Sanger Institute, Sanger scientists

Answer 32

NCTC and Wellcome Sanger Institute (WSI) launch a five-year project to sequence 3 000 bacterial strains from the collection using PacBio sequencing technology.
Sanger scientists publish the genome of NCTC 1, generated with SMRT Sequencing, and compare it to other S. flexneri isolates collected in 1954, 1984, and 2002.

Question 33

2018 Sarah Alexander and Mohammed- Abbas Fazal

Answer 33

NCTC scientists Sarah Alexander and Mohammed- Abbas Fazal complete the extraction of DNA from more than 3000 NCTC species and samples are delivered to WSI for sequencing using PacBio technology

Question 34

The Theory of Spontaneous Generation: Aristotle (384–322 BC)

Answer 34

notion that life can arise from nonliving matter

Question 35

The Theory of Spontaneous Generation: Jan Baptista van Helmont

Answer 35

proposed that mice could arise from rags and wheat kernels left in an open container for 3 weeks

Question 36

The Theory of Spontaneous Generation: Francesco Redi (1626–1697)-

Answer 36

performed an experiment in 1668 that was one of the first to refute the idea that maggots (the larvae of flies) spontaneously generate on meat left out in the open air

Question 37

Disproving Spontaneous Generation: 1711- Louse Joblot

Answer 37

studied the development of animalcules in hay and water suspensions (Joblot 1718). First, it was boiled for 15 min and distributed into two vessels. Vessel: One open, the other is close.

Question 38

Disproving Spontaneous Generation: Father John Turberville Needham (1713-1781)

Answer 38

The English priest Father John Turberville Needham (1713-1781) - a resolute advocate of abiogenesis. boiled a suspension of mutton meat, bottled it and sealed the flask from the air with a cork. After some days, the suspension was full of living things.
-Needham revised this theory: during a heating time of 1 h, a “vegetative power” would be destroyed

Question 39

Disproving Spontaneous Generation: Charles Bonnet (1720-1793)

Answer 39

was one of the first who questioned whether the flasks were really impenetrable for small animal

Question 40

Disproving Spontaneous Generation: Abbate Lazzaro Spallanzani (1729-1799)

Answer 40

filled different boiled infusions; (1 h) into vessels, which were closed carefully afterwards

Question 41

Disproving Spontaneous Generation: Spallanzani (1776)

Answer 41

carried out further experiments in 1776 to test the existence of a “vegetative power”
-“vegetative power” which could be destroyed after boiling for 1 h could not exist

Question 42

Disproving Spontaneous Generation: Franz Schulze 1836, Theodor Schwann 1837, Schroder and von Dusch (1854)

Answer 42

• Franz Schulze filled water, layer of cotton as a filter meat and vegetables into a for sterilization glass. At both ends of the glass, vessels were attached which were filled with sulfuric acid (Schulze 1836)
• One year later, Theodor Schwann (1837a) demonstrated that germs could be destroyed by heat.
• Schroder and von Dusch (1854) successfully used a layer of cotton as a filter for sterilization

Question 43

The Germ Theory of Disease

Answer 43

French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur English surgeon Joseph Lister German physician Robert Koch are given much of the credit for development and acceptance of the theory