Man is surrounded by a habitat, certain components of which we are unable to see. And since, in addition to humans and animals, there is also a microcosm that directly or indirectly affects the entire environment, it needs to be studied. Microbiology is a science whose methods and goals are aimed at studying living microorganisms, the patterns of their development and life, as well as the features of interaction with nature and directly with humans, is microbiology.
The rise of microbiology
As part of a standard university course called "Microbiology", lectures include materials related to the history of science. Moreover, a descriptive period stands out in its development, which began with the invention of the microscope and the consideration of the first bacteria. Then new organisms were gradually revealed to science, and their meaning became more understandable to man. At the same time, pathogens that cause human diseases were further discovered.
Period from1880 to 1890, which is considered the "golden age" of microbiology, marked by the largest number of discoveries at that time. And the merit of Robert Koch (pictured below), who developed methods for isolating microbes from foci, cannot be ignored. Subsequently, other methods for the detection of microorganisms have already been developed. Their properties and role in biocenoses, as well as in human life, were studied in more detail.
The contribution of scientists to the development of science
The first scientist who tried to systematize the organisms of the microworld was Otto Friedrich Müller. He identified 379 separate types of microorganisms. He assigned them to certain classes. Microbiology, sanitation and epidemiology had not yet been introduced into practice, and microbes were already understood as separate organisms living in a world inaccessible to the human eye.
The studies of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch helped to recognize this world and learn more about it. The latter was able to develop the principles for isolating microorganisms from the test material taken from sick people, and Pasteur (together with Koch) concluded that microbes are the causative agents of infectious pathologies. By the way, at a time when infections made the most significant contribution to the overall incidence, the role of these studies was very important.
Already after that, many new names appear in the history of science. This is how microbiology developed. Scientists made a huge contribution to this great cause, glorifying their names. As an example, we can cite such researchers as M. V. Beijerink, S. N. Vinogradsky, G. Kh. Gram, I. I. Mechnikov, D. I. Ivanovsky, L. S. Tsenkovsky, E. A. Bering, Z. A. Waksman, A. Calmette, R. F. Peyton and others. Of course, this is not a complete list of the luminaries of science, and even more so, we could not describe all their merits within the framework of the article. A course called "Microbiology" (lectures and practical exercises) examines in detail many of the results of the research of these scientists.
Developed areas of microbiology
At the present stage of development of any science, research methods are being improved, which means that there are opportunities for a more complete study of certain microorganisms and their characteristics. As a result, discoveries are being made that allow indirectly or directly apply knowledge about microbes in any industry. For this reason, microbiology is not just a theoretical field of knowledge. This is a science with some branches:
- general microbiology;
- medical (mycology, bacteriology, virology, protozoology);
- veterinary;
- industrial;
- agricultural;
- branch of sanitary microbiology;
- aquatic microbiology.
Medical microbiology is a complete science, including mycology, bacteriology, protozoology, virology, sanitation and immunology. Methods have been developed to identify pathogens of infectious diseases and use effective drugs to treat them, to prevent diseases that previously led to pandemics with huge mortality rates.
Immunology, due to the complexity of the biochemical processes of immunity, almost branched off from microbiology into a separate science. Today it is combined with oncology and allergology. At the same time, other branches of microbiology are no less important: they allow us to evaluate the prospects for the genetic engineering use of microbes, to suggest the development of climate and biocenoses of the ocean and land. Also important is the potential use of micro-organisms in agriculture to control pests or to increase crop yields.
Goals of microbiology
Each separate branch of microbiology has its own goals and methods that allow them to be achieved. In particular, medical microbiology aims to study the maximum possible number of pathogenic and opportunistic microorganisms, their interaction with the human body, as well as possible ways to counteract contact with infections and treat them.
Improvement of microbial diagnostics, elimination of foci of pathogenic microflora in the biosphere, as well as vaccine prophylaxis complement the methods of medical microbiology. At the same time, due to lack of funding and due to the possible risk of disruption of processes in biocenoses, it is not yet possible to completely get rid of pathogens of infectious diseases. However, even at the present stage, sanitation and hygiene, microbiology and immunology can significantly reduce the number of such pathologies and their complications.
Industrial microbiology aims to study the properties of microbes that canapply at various stages of production. In particular, the most promising areas of such scientific developments are the use of bacteria for the decomposition of industrial waste. In agricultural microbiology, the goal is the potential application of tiny organisms to increase crop yields and possibly control pests and weeds.
Veterinary microbiology, like medical microbiology, studies pathogens in animals. Methods for identifying ailments, their diagnosis and treatment in our smaller friends are as relevant as in humans. Aquatic microbiology deals with the study of the composition of microorganisms in the oceans with the aim of systematizing knowledge and their potential application in industry or agriculture.
Sanitary microbiology studies food products and detects microbes in them. Its goal remains to improve the methods that allow batches of food products to be tested. The second task is to counteract epidemics of infectious diseases and optimize the conditions for people to stay in various institutions that are dangerous from the point of view of the epidemic of contact infections.
General Microbiology
General microbiology is a science whose methods allow you to study any microorganisms in various habitats. It is the base industry that provides the resulting information to industrial, agricultural, veterinary and medical microbiology. It studies bacteria and their families, the ability of microorganisms to grow on various nutrient media, the patterns of colonization of certain climaticzones.
Gene drift is also one of the main interests of bacteriologists, as this mechanism allows bacteria to acquire new abilities over short periods of time. One of the most undesirable is antibiotic resistance. The emergence of new strains of bacteria resistant to a particular antimicrobial drug significantly complicates the tasks of medical microbiology.
But that's not all. General microbiology is the science of viruses, fungi, and protozoa. This is also the doctrine of immunity. In accordance with certain interests, separate branches of science were also distinguished: virology, mycology, protozoology, immunology. New data obtained during the study of strains of bacteria, fungi and viruses will be applied in any other branch of microbiology and are of some importance.
Bacteriology
The kingdom of bacteria is considered the most numerous among all the others that microbiology studies. Because of this, topics on bacteria research are the most narrow. To assign a certain organism to one species requires a thorough study of its morphology and biochemical processes. For example, many bacteria of the intestinal group ferment glucose and are assigned to a specific group based on this criterion.
From a certain community of organisms, a strain will be further isolated - a pure bacterial culture. All its individuals will be characterized by the same genetic material, the same as that of other members of the same species. And most importantly, all these bacteria willbehave in the same way within the population living in this environment. In other conditions, the same culture freely mutates and adapts, which is why a new strain is formed. It may differ in a different set of enzymes and virulence factors. Therefore, his ability to cause disease will be different.
Virology
Among all living organisms, viruses are the most atypical. They are defective, incapable of metabolism, and for reproduction they have chosen the tactics of parasitism. It is important that these are also the most amazing pathogens of all that microbiology (virology) studies. Immunology also deals with the study of viruses, because many of them can suppress the immune system and cause cancer.
Viruses are very simple organisms with not yet fully understood mechanisms of functioning. They cannot metabolize nutrients, but remain alive. Having no structures responsible for life, they still exist. Moreover, a virus can be thought of as a genetic material with mechanisms for introducing it into cells where reproduction will take place.
It is obvious that this mechanism of introduction and reproduction is "designed" in such a way as to bypass all conceivable protective barriers of the cell. An example is the HIV virus, which, despite the powerful protection of the immune system, easily and simply infects a person and leads to immunodeficiency. Therefore, microbiology and immunology should jointly deal with this problem, looking for ways to solve it. BUTas viruses become more capable due to the astonishing rate of mutation, mechanisms to combat these pathogens need to be developed as quickly as possible.
Mycology
Mycology is the branch of general microbiology that studies molds. These organisms tend to cause disease in humans, animals, and crops. Molds spoil food and due to the fact that they are able to form spores, they are practically invulnerable. However, while they have a small number of virulence factors and reproduce rather slowly, their contribution to the overall incidence is small.
Fungi remain the most adapted organisms to live in the most extreme conditions on land. They rarely live underwater, but thrive in medium to high humidity conditions. And, remarkably, fungi grow on the hulls of spacecraft in near-Earth orbits, and also inhabited the hull of the damaged Chernobyl nuclear power plant reactor. Given the enormous resilience to these microbial control factors, food microbiology and sanitation must be developed more actively. This should be facilitated by the development of mycology and other branches of general microbiology.
Protozoology
Microbiology also studies protozoa. These are unicellular organisms that differ from bacteria in their larger size and the presence of a cell nucleus. Due to its presence, they are more adapted to stationary environmental conditions.environment rather than dynamically changing. However, they can cause diseases no less than others.
According to statistics provided by WHO, about a quarter of all cases of disease are malaria. While it is impossible to cope with it completely, because there are several types of plasmodium. This means that the importance of further study of all protists in general and Plasmodium in particular is very great.
Immunology
In the USSR Research Institute of Microbiology, many studies of the human immune system were carried out. The developments on them are still difficult to apply for treatment, but for diagnosis they are now indispensable. We are talking about the serological diagnosis of a number of infectious diseases. It is microbiology that clinical medicine owes to the presence in its arsenal of such a valuable diagnostic method.
It is important that all the departments of epidemiology and microbiology somehow affect the concept of immunity. And both disciplines make extensive use of vaccines. Their development is also the result of the scientific work of immunologists and microbiologists. They are the most effective preventive measures to limit (and in some cases even eliminate) the likelihood of infection through contact with a pathogenic viral or bacterial pathogen. Vaccines are currently being developed against HIV and viruses that cause cancer.
Methodology of microbiology
To study a certain microorganism means to determine the features of its morphology, to assess the completeness of the biochemical reactions that it is capable of, to recognize its RNA,assign to a particular kingdom and name the strain. This is the amount of work that needs to be done when opening a new crop. If the microbe is already known (determined by the characteristics of the fermentation of nutrient media substrates or by the cell wall), then it is required to attribute it to a specific strain. Any of these tasks require standardized methods and certain equipment.
Medical microbiology also has its own tasks: to find the causative agent of a disease in biological fluids and tissues that are targets for virulent infections, to identify the presence of a pathogen by serological markers, to determine a person's sensitivity to certain diseases. These tasks are solved by microbiological, microscopic, biological, serological and allergic methods.
In the textbook called "Microbiology" Vorobyov A. V. describes that microscopy is a fundamental, but not the main method of studying the microbe. It can be light, electronic, phase-contrast, dark-field and fluorescent. The author also points out that as a microbiological method, culture is considered the most important, which allows growing a colony of microbes found in the patient's biological fluids and media.
Cultural methods can be virological and bacteriological. Most often, research requires blood, urine, saliva, sputum, cerebrospinal fluid. From them, you can isolate the organism and sow it on a nutrient medium. This is necessary for diagnosis, because the concentration of microbes in the biological material is very low, andthe cultural method allows you to increase the volume of pathogenic flora.
In the textbook on the discipline "Microbiology" Vorobyov A. V. with co-authors describes the biological methods of studying microbes. They are based on the isolation of specific toxins characteristic of either a group of bacterial species or only one strain. Allergic methods are associated with the property of bacterial toxins to cause allergies (or sensitization) in the macroorganism when infected. An example is the Mantoux test. Serological methods, in turn, are reactions with specific antibodies and antigens of bacteria. This allows you to quickly and accurately determine the presence of a microbe in a tissue or liquid material taken from a patient.
Great advances in medical microbiology
Microbiology is an important science for practical medicine, which during its short existence has saved a huge number of lives. The most telling example is the discovery of microbes responsible for infectious diseases. This made it possible to obtain the first antibiotic. Thanks to him, a huge number of soldiers were saved from a wound infection.
Subsequently, the use of antibiotics began to expand, and today this allows for complex operations. Considering that many infections cannot be cured without the use of antibiotics, their presence simply turns all medicine upside down and makes it possible to save many lives. This achievement is on a par with vaccine prophylaxis, which also allowedsave many patients from the polio virus, hepatitis B and smallpox. And now immunological methods are being developed to fight cancer.
