Monday, 22nd September 2014, 4th Microbiology Class "Replacement class"

Important dates for our class today. 

7th October 2014 - Decide and pick a microbe for "ADOPT A MICROBE".

18th October 2014 - The "THANK A MICROBE" project due date. 

9th December 2014 - "ADOPT A MICROBE" project due date. Send in form of a scrapbook. 

21st December 2014 - Submit ePortfolio. (THIS BLOG!!) 

Ah. Today is a replacement class for 30th September which Tun Dr Mahathir will come to UPM!! And Dr Wan has to attend the ceremony so no class for that day. Hence, that's why we are here. It's a three hour lecture class. As soon as Dr Wan entered the room, she said there are some changes on the projects that we are assigned to and thanked those who have gave their opinion on the "ADOPT A MICROBE" project. The changes are that the "ADOPT A MICROBE" project is to be done individually instead of in a group like how we discussed it in the previous class. And any microbe can be picked! Be it beneficial or non-beneficial. It has to be submitted in the form of a scrapbook though. And! A new project is added! It's named "THANK A MICROBE". That, that project is to be done in the group we're in and still with the poster and video. The idea is to pick a beneficial microbe but based on a specific field such as medicine, agriculture and industrial. 

There goes the briefing on the current projects. 

Today, we proceed on the brief history of Microbiology and the second topic of Microbiology I which is "Microscopy" that covered on the microscopes used to observe the microbes. 

What I learned today is : 

1- There are 2 types of microscope which is light microscope which consist of bright field microscope, dark field microscope, phase contrast microscope, confocal microscope and fluorescence microscope. Another type of microscope is electron microscope. 

Dark field microscopy produces bright image against a dark background.(Dark field microscopy of Treponema Pallidum, a spirochete) 

Phase contrast microscopy of cheek cell 

Confocal microscopy of a biofilm 

Fluorescence microscopy of a bacteria. 

Bright field microscopy produce dark image against a bright backgroud. 
(Bright field microscopy of macrophages) 

3- There are three types of electron microscope namely Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) and electron cryotomography.

TEM microscopy of a section through the gill of a bivalve mollusks. 

• SEM - produce 3D images, magnification of 1000X to 10000X and resolving power of 20nm. Used to observe surface features of cells and viruses. 
• TEM - produce 2D images, magnification of 10000X to 100000X and resolving power of 2.5nm. Used to observe internal ultrastructutures in thin sections cell. And to observe cross-sections. 
• electron cryotomography - produce 3D image, extremely high resolution image.

SEM microscopy of bacteria E. Coli

4- Protozoan have vessicles which is for buoyancy. 

5- We must stain first the microbe that we're going to observe because some organelles are colourless. 

6- To have a higher resolution of the image when using the microscope, use oil immersion lenses. However, once we have used the oil, we must clean it thoroughly before using the dry lenses again because oil on non-oil lenses will only distort the images seen on microscope. 

7- Fungi produces zoospores (motile, flagellated spores) that attach to the grass that ruminants eat and they're mobile because they have flagella. 

Zoospore

Zoospore

• Zoospores are naked, wall-less cells, specialised for dispersal because they cannot absorb organic nutrients or divide.
• Zoospores swim for many hours, using endogenous food reserves and encyst by retracting or shredding their flagella, then secreting a wall. 
• Zoospores can respond to wide range of environmental signals which they use to locate the sites where they will encyst. 

8- Sporangium, a structure in fungi, will mature and burst producing spores. 

9- The smallest microbe award goes to!! VIRUSES!! 

10- The original vessel that is used by Pasteur to disprove theory of spontaneous generation has been sealed and on display at Pasteur museum in Paris. And it still show no sign of contamination even after 100 years! 

11- The first person to discover microbes or also known as the "Father Of Microbiology" --> Antonie van Leeuwenhoek while the first person who prove the existence of microbes --> Louis Pasteur.

12- Originally, "animalcule" is a single celled organism which is now known as "microorganism". 

13- The first theory of biogenesis is "living cells can arise only from preexisting living cells" in which life does not arise from non-living material.

14- Pasteurization is a process invented by Louis Pasteur which is a process of preservation. Pasteurization won't kill all the microbes, it will only kill the pathogens present, unlike sterilisation. Pasteur somehow has discovered that by heating milk to a high temperature then cooling it before bottling it will enable the milk to remain fresher for an extended period of time.

15- The main aim for Koch's postulate is actually to get a pure culture of the pathogen in order to prove that a particular microbe is the cause of a specific disease in an organism. 

16- BCG or Bacillus-Calmette Guerin vaccination is given to babies at birth to protect them against tuberculosis (TB). 

17- Vaccine is attenuated (I just learned this word today!!) which means weaken antigen (toxin) that will trigger the immune system to produce specific antibodies towards that infection. 

18- The main ingredient for the deadly disease H1N1 influenza vaccine (Tamiflu) is star anise which is widely used in the Indian cuisine.

Scientific name : Illicium verum