Microbiology

Educational Process

The European School of Life Sciences in Poland prides itself on the quality of its teaching. IEU, Poland teaches students in all of the Life Science disciplines. The Microbiology course at IEU, Poland aims to provide students with a doing-by-learning approach to the technical/scientific knowledge related to the most common protocols implemented in an environmental and food microbiology laboratory. The course aims to provide students with the ability to define the analytical methods and procedures to be adopted to qualitatively and quantitatively assess the quality/process and safety indicators of food along its entire production chain starting from the raw material. The course provides the necessary operational tools to apply the concepts of industrial microbiology to the laboratory.

After graduating students are able:

• Define endosymbiotic theory concerning mitochondria and chloroplasts.
• State at least two characteristics that all living cells share (e.g., membrane, DNA, and metabolism).
• List three mechanisms of horizontal gene transfer in bacteria.
• State two processes by which mutations can occur.
• Describe how mutations and horizontal gene transfer, together with selective pressure, can lead to a rise in antibiotic resistance (or xenobiotic bioremediation or spread of virulence mechanisms).
• Give an example of a bacterial pathogen that evolved naturally or artificially to become attenuated (e.g., vaccine strains, intracellular pathogens, etc.). Support the example with evidence.
• Analyze and interpret sequence data to determine if horizontal gene transfer, mutation, or recombination has occurred.
• Define the term nosocomial infection.
• Define the term emergent disease.
• Distinguish between the terms endemic, epidemic, and pandemic.
• Describe two human practices (in medicine and agriculture) that have led to the increase of antibiotic resistance (e.g., antibiotics and sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics in feed, stopping antibiotic therapy too soon, repeated use of the same antibiotic).
• Describe two human practices that have led to the development of dead zones in bays or oceans.
• Give an example of a disease that has emerged due to human activities, and state what those human activities were (e.g., AIDS, Ebola virus, bird flu, Lyme disease, etc.).
• Explain how public health policies (e.g., quarantine and vaccination) can alter epidemic/pandemic progression.
• Explain how not completing a full treatment of antibiotics can lead to an increase in resistance in a bacterial population.
• Describe the general process of sexual reproduction, and how it relates to the definition of species in eukaryotic organisms.
• Describe the general process of asexual reproduction/binary fission.
• Describe the concept of a species concerning a core genome and genomic islands.
• Explain why the traditional definitions of species using reproductive isolation do not apply to Bacteria and Archaea.
• Discuss one benefit and one problem of this definition of a species: “Bacterial and Archaeal species are defined when there is more than 70% DNA hybridization among strains.”
• List the three Domains of the phylogenetic tree of life. State a unique characteristic of each Domain.
• List two features of a useful molecular/evolutionary clock.
• Explain what features of 16S rRNA make it useful to compare the evolutionary relationship between organisms.
• Determine the two most related and two least related organisms from a short list of 16S rRNA sequences.
• Draw inferences about the evolutionary relatedness of organisms based on phylogenetic trees.
• List three different bacterial cell morphologies.
• Identify microbial structures from a given image.
• Describe how the cell structure of Gram-negative and Gram-positive cells leads to a given Gram stain result.
• Explain how bright-field microscopy works and why specimens must be stained.
• Explain how phase-contrast microscopy works and why specimens do not need to be stained.
• Decide on the correct type of microscopy and sample preparation for a given situation.
• Explain how magnification and resolution are controlled in a microscope.
• State the advantages and disadvantages of using bright-field, phase-contrast, dark-field, fluorescence, confocal scanning laser, transmission electron, and scanning electron microscopy for a given situation.