Microbiology

What you'll learn

• Explain how microbiology became a science, apply Koch’s postulates and their molecular successors critically, and use microscopy, staining, culture media and direct counts to study microorganisms.
• Relate the structure of bacterial and archaeal cells, including peptidoglycan, Gram-positive and Gram-negative envelopes, archaeal membranes, appendages and endospores, to staining, antibiotic action, pathogenesis and survival.
• Calculate generation times and growth rates, perform viable count, most probable number and turbidity calculations, and model batch growth with the Monod equation and continuous culture in a chemostat.
• Describe how temperature, pH, water activity and oxygen limit growth, and use D-values, z-values and F-values to design and evaluate sterilization, pasteurization and disinfection processes.
• Explain the targets and mechanisms of the major antibacterial drug classes, determine and interpret minimum inhibitory concentrations, and analyse the biochemical and evolutionary basis of antimicrobial resistance and the responses to it.
• Classify microorganisms by energy, electron and carbon sources, calculate free energy changes from reduction potentials, and compare respiration, fermentation, chemolithotrophy, phototrophy, nitrogen fixation, methanogenesis and syntrophy.
• Describe prokaryotic genome organization and mutation, explain transformation, transduction, conjugation, plasmids and mobile elements, and evaluate their role in the spread of resistance and virulence and the defences against them.
• Describe virion architecture, classify viruses with the Baltimore scheme, and calculate titres, particle-to-PFU ratios and Poisson infection fractions from multiplicity of infection.
• Explain the viral replication cycle, interpret one-step growth experiments, contrast lytic and temperate phages and their therapeutic uses, and relate viral mutation, reassortment and spillover to the emergence of new viruses.
• Describe microbial habitats, biofilms and quorum sensing, analyse community survey data with diversity indices and rarefaction while recognizing their biases, and evaluate claims about the human microbiome critically.
• Apply microbiology to fermented foods, industrial production, recombinant proteins, wastewater treatment, bioremediation and food safety, using growth and BOD models and the HACCP and hurdle approaches.
• Conduct an outbreak investigation using surveillance data, genomic clustering, epidemic curves and attack-rate analysis, and explain biosafety and biosecurity governance under Canada’s Human Pathogens and Toxins Act and Canadian Biosafety Standard, with US comparisons.