A General Review and Growth of Microbiology

To begin this semester of posts, I think looking into how microbiology has grown from its start to where it is today will allow me to develop a vision for future concepts and interests. Who I consider as one of the major beginners of microbiology is Anton Van Leeuwenhoek, who was one of the first to have descriptions of many microscopic organisms. But how they functioned with everything around us was not studied until much later. Louis Pasteur might be the one who disproved spontaneous generation and found that microorganisms could be the reason for disease. This may also have sparked the new interest in this field of study. One of the next major breakthroughs came from Robert and his postulates. He made even more certain the connection between microorganisms and disease.

Since then we have done much to improve what we know about microbiology. We have found different disease causing agents, bacteria, viruses, and made treatments such as antibiotics that can stop the spread of disease causing microbes. This was spread rapidly after World War II. Fleming found a use for penicillin in 1928 which allowed for the antibiotic study to spread. Microbiology is now broken into many different fields and serves a variety of purposes in the world today.

We now have a variety of instruments which allow us to find cellular information from the inside out. We have developed into a variety of different fields and serve many purposes. As we have mentioned there is a wide use for clinical and medical microbiology. These are able to study microbes and detect them in both people and the environment. Others work in companies to provide a variety of services which microbiology could be useful. These can connect to work with plants, foods, sewage treatment and more. Another very well-known area is the use of microbiology to make and develop alcoholic beverages which as many of us know is a profitable area. We continue with genetic work and my interest, forensics; using PCR, electrophoresis, and other instruments to analyze microscopic information and collect evidence.

I will end by saying this review of microbiology has given me much to consider and I now am more interested to look into some of the areas I have mentioned in future blogs, and find out this area is continuing to expand today.

Sources:

https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/BB/A/B/O/N/_/bbabon.pdf

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/biology/microbiology/introduction-to-microbiology/a-brief-history-of-microbiology

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4451890/pdf/15-0212.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC440961/pdf/bactrev00186-0007.pdf

http://www.generalmicroscience.com/microbiology/branches-of-microbiology/