Quotes About Microbiology

Why some gonococcal strains are more resistant than others is still not clear.

Bacteria are single-celled organisms. Bacteria are the model organisms for everything that we know in higher organisms. There are 10 times more bacterial cells in you or on you than human cells.

The anaerobic saprophyte Clostridium botulinum is simple to culture, requiring only

Give me something about bacteria. Give me something that won't make me feel so inferior

If you want to be an anthropologist, you need to study physical anthropology specialized in bones. If you want to be a forensic chemist, get a degree in chemistry. Do you want to do DNA work? Get a degree in microbiology. And do well. Study hard and go to graduate school.

Some experts say we are moving back to the pre-antibiotic era. No. This will be a post-antibiotic era. In terms of new replacement antibiotics, the pipeline is virtually dry. A post-antibiotic era means, in effect, an end to modern medicine as we know it. Things as common as strep throat or a child's scratched knee could once again kill.

A virus is not just DNA; a virus is also packaged up, covered over with a series of proteins in a nice, elegant, well-compacted form.

Virus particles contain single molecules of nucleic acid.

As long as we do not know how the cell works, we don't know the kind of havoc the AIDS virus creates in the cell.

As a microbiologist, I am particularly concerned with Mr. Bush's blatant disregard for science.

the germ theory said that minute living organisms invaded the body, multiplied, and caused disease, and that a specific germ caused a specific disease.

most scientific rival of the germ theory explained disease in terms purely of chemistry. It saw disease as a chemical process.

In 1881 he became the first to isolate the pneumococcus, a few weeks before Pasteur and Koch. (None of the three recognized the bacteria's full importance.) Sternberg also first observed that white blood cells engulfed bacteria, a key to understanding the immune system.

Influenza is an RNA virus. So are HIV and the coronavirus.

But if your immune system isn't great, and fails to monitor it, P. gingivalis starts to produce biofilm-signaling molecules, and neighboring organisms are like, wait, we can join a biofilm?" (Biofilms are slimy structures inside of which bacteria live in an organized community and communicate with one another; the spongy molecular matrix that contains them helps protect them from the immune system's attacks.) And soon you've got a mouth full of cavities.

will discuss molecular machines that allow cells to swim, and you will see what is required for them to do so.

The usurper was called Strain 121, referring to its facility of growth at 121°C.5 This is a game changer for microbiologists, because 121 degrees is the temperature inside a lab autoclave. Autoclaves sterilize surgical instruments, as well as glassware and growth media for microbiological experiments, by replacing the dry air in their steel chambers with pressurized steam. As far as we know, Strain 121 is unique: every other living thing is defeated by autoclaving.

At the level of their biochemistry, the barrier between bacteria and complex cells barely exists.

It seems that all eukaryotic cells either have, or once had (and then lost) mitochondria. In other words, possession of mitochondria is a sine qua non of the eukaryotic condition

NASA reports that microbiologists at the University of Tennessee, led by Gary Sayler, have developed a rugged biological computer chip housing bacteria that glow upon sensing pollutants, from heavy metals to PCBs (Miller 2004). Such innovations hint at new microbiotechnologies on the near horizon. Working together, fungal networks and environmentally responsive bacteria could provide us with data about pH, detect nutrients and toxic waste, and even measure biological populations.