Medical Microbiology BIOL 2161 Chapter 1 - An Invisible World

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms, historical figures, scientific tools, taxonomic systems, and microbial domains from Chapter 1: An Invisible World.

Microbial Fermentation

A process that uses bacteria, mold, or yeast to convert sugars (carbohydrates) to alcohol, gases, and organic acids.

Ötzi the Iceman

A 5300-year-old mummy found frozen in the Ötzal Alps in 1991 who showed evidence of infection with Trichuris trichiura and Borrelia burgdorferi.

Cloaca Maxima

A giant sewer built in ancient Rome that carried waste away into the river Tiber, helping protect residents from epidemics of waterborne illnesses.

Hippocrates

A Greek physician (460–370 BC) known as the 'father of Western medicine' who posited that diseases had natural causes from within patients or their environments rather than supernatural causes.

Thucydides

A Greek philosopher and historian (460–395 BC) known as the 'father of scientific history' who observed during the Athenian plague that survivors did not get re-infected, demonstrating an early understanding of immunity.

Marcus Terentius Varro

A Roman writer (116–27 BC) who proposed in Res Rusticae (36 BC) that disease is caused by minute creatures (animalia minuta) floating in the air that enter the body through the mouth and nose.

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek

A Dutch cloth merchant (1632–1723) who was the first to develop a lens powerful enough to view single-celled microorganisms ('animalcules' or 'wee little beasties') in 1675.

Louis Pasteur

A French chemist who demonstrated that individual microbial strains had unique properties, showed fermentation is caused by microorganisms, invented pasteurization, and developed vaccines such as for rabies.

Robert Koch

A German physician who was the first to demonstrate the connection between a single, isolated microbe and a known human disease, identifying the bacteria that cause anthrax, cholera, and tuberculosis.

Growth Media

Liquid, solid, or gel-like substances used to grow microorganisms in a laboratory setting by providing nutrients such as water, salts, carbon, and nitrogen sources.

Petri Dish

A flat-lidded dish typically $10\text{--}11\,\text{cm}$ in diameter and $1\text{--}1.5\,\text{cm}$ high made of plastic or glass, used to hold growth media.

Inoculation Loop

A handheld tool ending in a small wire loop used to streak microorganisms on agar in a Petri dish or to transfer them from one test tube to another.

Taxonomy

The classification, description, identification, and naming of living organisms.

Carolus Linnaeus

A Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician (1701–1778) who published Systema Naturae and established a standard format for categorizing and naming organisms.

Phylogenetic Tree

A diagram depicting the evolutionary relationships (phylogenies) among different species of organisms based on shared characteristics or genetic analysis.

Ernst Haeckel

A German biologist who proposed the kingdom Protista in 1866 for unicellular organisms and later proposed the kingdom Monera for unicellular organisms lacking nuclei.

Robert Whittaker

An American ecologist (1920–1980) who proposed adding the kingdom Fungi in 1969 and structured life into five kingdoms categorized under two empires: Prokaryota and Eukaryota.

Carl Woese and George Fox

American microbiologists who created a genetics-based tree of life based on small subunit ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene sequences, establishing the three domains Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya.

Binomial Nomenclature

A two-word naming system for identifying organisms using a capitalized genus name followed by an uncapitalized specific epithet, both printed in italics.

Bergey's Manuals

Standard reference manuals first published in 1923 (including Bergey's Manual of Determinative Bacteriology and Bergey's Manual of Systematic Bacteriology) used for identifying and classifying prokaryotes.

Bacteria

Unicellular prokaryotic organisms whose cell walls typically contain peptidoglycan and whose DNA is not housed in a true nucleus.

Archaea

Unicellular prokaryotic organisms whose cell walls lack peptidoglycan (often containing pseudopeptidoglycan) and which inhabit nearly every environment on Earth, including extreme environments.

Protists

An informal grouping of eukaryotic organisms that are not plants, animals, or fungi.

Algae

Photosynthetic protists that can be unicellular or multicellular with cell walls made of cellulose.

Protozoa

Diverse protists that provide nutrients in food webs, moving using hair-like cilia, whip-like flagella, or cytoplasmic extensions called pseudopods.

Pseudopods

Cytoplasmic extensions ('false feet') created when a protozoan extends part of its cell membrane and cytoplasm to propel itself forward.

Fungi

Non-photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms with cell walls usually made of chitin, including unicellular yeasts and multicellular molds.

Helminths

Multicellular parasitic worms whose study falls within microbiology because infection diagnosis involves microscopic eggs and larvae.

Viruses

Acellular microorganisms composed of proteins and genetic material (either DNA or RNA, but never both) that require a host cell to replicate.

Bacteriology

The subfield of microbiology dedicated to the study of bacteria.

Mycology

The subfield of microbiology dedicated to the study of fungi.

Protozoology

The subfield of microbiology dedicated to the study of protozoa.

Parasitology

The subfield of microbiology dedicated to the study of helminths and other parasites.

Virology

The subfield of microbiology dedicated to the study of viruses.

Immunology

The study of the immune system, commonly integrated into microbiology due to the centrality of host–pathogen interactions in infectious disease processes.