Microbiology: A Very Short Introduction

Very Short Introductions #413

by Nicholas P. Money

In recent decades we have come to realize that the microbial world is hugely diverse, and can be found in the most extreme environments. Fungi, single-celled protists, bacteria, archaea, and the vast array of viruses and sub-viral particles far outnumber plants and animals. Microbes, we now know, play a critical role in ecosystems, in the chemistry of atmosphere and oceans, and within our bodies. The field of microbiology, armed with new techniques from molecular biology, is now one of the most vibrant in the life sciences.

In this Very Short Introduction Nicholas P. Money explores not only the traditional methods of microscopy and laboratory culture but also the modern techniques of genetic detection and DNA sequencing, genomic analysis, and genetic manipulation. In turn he demonstrates how advances in microbiology have had a tremendous impact on the areas of medicine, agriculture, and biotechnology.

ABOUT THE The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Genres: Science, Biology, Nonfiction, Popular Science, Medical

144 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 2014

About the author

Nicholas Money is a mycologist, science writer, and professor at Miami University.

Reviews

[Seema Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. I'm really enjoying all the books in this short introductory series from Oxford press

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is what the title says, and fits in nicely with several other biology-related Very Short Introductions (Viruses, Bacteria, Infectious Disease, Pandemics, Evolution, The History of Life, Genes, The Immune System, and others). The book touches peripherally on even more VSI topics such as Astrobiology, Climate Change, and Coral Reefs. The density of topics and scientific terms makes for fairly tough reading, even though I had already read a number of related books. For someone entirely new to the subject of microbiology and its prerequisites, this book might be a challenge.

I found a few typos too, suggesting that even the proofreaders got tired.

To illustrate the concept density, consider these two sentences which include the only mention in the main text of coral:

"Acidification and ocean warming affect scale formation by coccolithophorid algae and contribute to the expulsion of the dinoflagellates (zooxanthellae) whose photosynthetic activity supports corals. Research on microbial ecology is fundamental to our understanding of the causes and consequences [of] climate change."

For someone who had never heard of coral bleaching before, the second half of that first sentence might be rather difficult to absorb on the first reading (especially coming after the half-dozen-odd technical concepts in the torrent of subordinate phrases). Fortunately, Wikipedia exists, and that's why the ebook version of this book would likely be more convenient than the paper version, if you're reading on a device with a Web browser. I can't imagine too many people could get through this book without having to look a few things up. It would be nice if all the jargon linked directly to the corresponding Wikipedia articles, but I suppose that's asking too much.

The above sample is fairly typical for the book, with few subjects enjoying more than a few paragraphs of explanation before we're off to another bunch. It's as if the author had an awful lot to say and not enough alloted pages. This one certainly warrants its Further Reading section, but that's what I've come to expect for VSIs. It's more a book for learning about what else you need to read, than being a stand-alone work, but that probably can't be helped with a topic so vast.

I give the book five stars, even if it sounds like I'm complaining, because I'm really not. The book packs a lot of information and probably, for most readers, more than a few interesting surprises.

[Niall · Rating 3 out of 5]

Takeaways:
'The average human comprises forty trillion eukaryotic cells and an accompanying microbiome of a hundred trillion bacterias, mostly in the gut, and one quadrillion viruses. We are, in raw cell numbers, more microbe than mammal.' 69

'All biology was microbiology for 2.6 billion years' 84

'The application of the term "species" is even more problematic for viruses than bacteria and we rely on arbitrary measures of genetic novelty when we refer to different kinds of bacteriophage.' 88

[Ryan Hoyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Considers a wide range of topics and some really interesting info. But very dry style.

[ميرلوك ﻓﻴﻨﻮﺱ · Rating 5 out of 5]

كتاب جيد ذكرني بمحاضرات الدكتور زو المايكروبيولوجي، الترجمة كانت واضحة، بالرغم معرفتي لمعظم محتوى الكتاب إلا اني استمتعت بقراءة كل كلمة

[Bojan Tunguz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Biology is a fascinating discipline and one of the oldest scientific subjects. Fascination with the living world is deeply ingrained in the human psyche - we do depend on the knowledge and understanding of other organisms for our survival. However, for most of the human history the systematic study of biology focused almost exclusively on macroscopic organism. Only with the invention of the microscope were we able to study the tiniest organism - the unicellular organism that predominate the Biosphere.

This short book covers all of the known microorganism in a more or systematic way - bacteria, archaea, unicellular eukaryotes, and it even briefly goes over the viruses. (There are a few very good Very Short Introduction books that cover some of those biological entities in their own right.) The book gives you a remarkable amount of information about microbiology for its size. It covers the evolution of microorganisms, and their biochemistry. Unsurprisingly, it gives a lot of space to microorganisms that cause various diseases, especially in humans. Historically this was the primary motivation for studying the microorganisms, and it’s still a very relevant medical issues. Unfortunately, however, it has biased us to think of all microorganisms as harmful. The vast majority of them are either neutral or beneficial. Human body in terms of the sheer number of cells is more microbial than multicellular. Our guts alone are an incredible microbiological ecosystems, and we are only now starting to understand how many of them affect our well being.

One of the issues that I have with this book is that it is pretty dense in terms of jargon and concepts that it covers. The writing style and the presentation are very fluid and well organized, but you still have a lot of very high-level scientific concepts that might be unfamiliar to most readers of this book. If you are willing to be challenged, though, this could be an ideal small book to get you acquainted with the up-to-date science and biology lingo.

The book seems very fresh and up to date with the latest insights and developments in the field of microbiology. One of the more interesting insights for me was the recent prevailing theory of the tree of life which postulates that the eukaryotes evolved from archaea. Thus, it seems to upend the three-pronged tree of life picture (bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes) that has been around for just a few decades. Another interesting thing that I’ve learned from this book is that the vast majority of microorganisms cannot be cultured in the lab, and are thus not very well studied or understood. This puts in perspective the amount of knowledge that we have about the natural world.

Unfortunately, this book will not bring you any closer to the understanding of the ultimate origins of life. This topics remains an enduring mystery, and for its resolution will likely require much more powerful analytical, experimental and computational resources than we have today.

This is a very interesting and well written little book that I would strongly recommend to anyone interested in biology or science in general.

[Badr Mokrai · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب رائع ومدهش جدا بمعلوماته،يتحدث الأستاذ نيكولاس من خلالها عن علم الأحياء الدقيقة، ذاك الذي يدرس البكتيريا والطلائعيات والعتائق وغيرها من الكائنات الحية أحادية الخلية وأخرى الدقيقة جدا، كذلك يدرس الفيروسات والبايرونات وما شاكلها.

في الفصل الأول، يخبرنا الكاتب أن الكائنات الحية تهيمن على كافة الكوكب، من قطرة ماء ونسمة هواء الى أمعائنا نحن بني البشر؛ بل حتى في فوهات البراكين والمياه الحارة والنفط توجد كائنات حية تعيش وتتأقلم في أعتى الظروف. هناك تنوع هائل في تغذيتها، فمن التركيب الضوئي، مرورا بذاتية التغذية والمحللة وصولا الى غازية التغذية، التي تعيش على غاز الكبريت أو الهيدروجين.
يقسم الكاتب الكائنات الدقيقة ويعيد أصلها الى تلاث، فوق حقيقيات النواة (الميكروبات) وفوق العتائق وفوق البكتيريا، ويقسمها كذلك الى نوعين حقيقية النوات أي تلك التي تتوفر على غشاء نووي، وبدائية النوة لا تتوفر على اي غشاء.
الفيروسات ليست كائنات حية، لأنها لا تتكاثر إلا بوجود خلية حية، وليس لها أيض، وكل العمليات تتم خارج الفيروس، لذلك يطلق عليا العلماء إسم "الكائنات الجزيئية".

في الفصل الثاني، يتحدث الكاتب عن آلية عمل الميكروبات.
حتى تعيش أي خلية لابد من وجود الماء ومصدر معية للطاقة؛ هناك عدة مصادر طاقة للكائنات الحية الدقيقة بناءا على نوعها، فاضافة الي المحللة، هناك كائنات جمادية التغذية وكيميائية التغذية، أي تلك التي تتغذى على المعادن وأخرى التي تتغذى على الغازات.

في الفصل الثالث، يتحدث الكاتب عن علمي الوراثة الميكروبية والأحياء الدقيقة.
هناك عدة طرق لتكاثر الكائنات الحية الدقيقة، فهناك النسخ العادي لجزيء دي إن إي إلى إر إن إيه وتركيب البروتينات، أو التكاثر الجنسي...

في الفصل الرابع، يطرح الكاتب عالم الفيروسات.
هناك عدة أنواع من الفيروسات؛ مزدوجة DNA و مفردته، مزدوجة RNA ومفردته سالب وموجب، مزدوجة DNA المعتمدة على النسخ العكسي.
تعتبر الفيروسات مسؤلة عن 10 الى 20 في المئة من حالات السرطان.
هناك فيروسات معيبة تحتاج مساعدة فيروس عملاق ليساعدها على التكاثر (تسمى أيضا فيروسات آكلة أو متطفلة.
هناك أيضا كائنات جزئية أبسط من الفيروسات وهي البايرونات التي لا تحتوي على أي حمض نووي.

في الفصل الخامس، يتحدث الكاتب عن علم الأحياء وعلاقته بالصحة والمرض لذى الإنسان.
يصاحب جسم الإنسان 100 تريليون بكتيريا ومليون تريليون فيروس، معظمها ليست ممرضة، بل تساهم في بقاء الكائن الحي.
الميكروبات الإنتهازية هي تلك التي تنتظر ضعف مقاومة جسم الكائن الحي للإنقضاض عليه واستعماره.

الفصل السادس، يعرفنا الكاتب بعلم البيئة الميكروبي والتطور.
طيلة 2,6 مليون سنة، ضلت الحياة على الأرض مقتصرة على الكائنات الدقيقة، ولم توجد كائنات متعددة الخلايا إلا بعد ذلك.
اضافة الى ضرورية الشمس لاستمرار الحياة على الأرض، تلعب الكائنات الدقيقة أدوار هامة، خاصة باحتجازها للكربون، وانتاجها للاكسجين، ودورها البارز في السلسلة الغذائية.

الفصل السابع، يناقش الكاتب الدور المحوري للميكروبات في الزراعة و التكنولوجيا الحيوية.
تلعب الكائنات الدقيقة دورا هاما في مكافحة الحشرات والطفيليات التي تهاجم المحاصيل الزراعية.

وكانطباع عام، كتاب رائع بكل المقاييس، مفيد ومدهش بالحقائق التي يطرحها، أنصح بقراءته بشدة.

[Adam Aust · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great compendium of interesting microbiology facts for folks with some background in the life sciences. It's probably a little too technical for those lacking a basic understanding of genetics and cell biology, though.

[Michelle Cho · Rating 5 out of 5]

Microbiology - A Very Short Introduction
Rating 4.99/5 ⭐️s Fulfills its intent of being a short field guide of a whole field. I try to encourage myself to read more of these because they make visiting state parks The Best - I get to be super excited over sulfur vents on another level. My favorite, noteworthy science points from each chapter of this book:

1. “Cells are pushed or pulled through water by their beating flagella, and stop dead the moment the flagella motor switches off. A typical swimming speed is 25 um per second, which is comparable, in relation to the size of the organism, to the top speed of a cheetah.” (10)
2. “Ftsz and associated proteins are described as the divisome complex. Components of the divisome May be good targets for novel antibodies.” (33)
3. “Features of archea that are more similar to eukaryotes than bacteria include the homologue between the single type of RNA polymerase in archaea and one of the RNA polymerase enzymes used by eukaryotes, the promoter sequences of archaea and eukaryotes, and their translational machinery.” (45)
4. “Pandoraviruses are the biggest viruses discovered so far. They occupy amoeba, forming ovid particles surrounded by a lipid envelope, and lack the instructions for making capsid proteins.” (66)
5. “Babies born by Caesarian section tend to be coated with microbes from the skin of the mother and other adults that handle the newborn infant. These organisms seed the micro biome of the infant gut.” (70)
6. “Bacteria and archea form 90 percent of the ocean biomass and the surface waters are filled with eukaryotic algae…Viruses, particularly bacteriophages, are the most abundant entities in the ocean.” (85)
7. “Retroviruses will insert gene’s into a patient’s chromosomes; adenoviruses introduce genes into the nucleus of a host cell without integrating foreign genetic materials into the chromosomes.” (106)

[Zachary Wagoner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Found the book to be an excellent introduction to microbiology. Read it as a layman just looking to learn something new, and I wasn't disappointed. Could also see it being a good point of entry for someone wanting to go beyond mere curiosity.

[Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

For someone with a scientific background, but not a lot of microbiology training, I thought this was a good, reasonably sized overview of the field and some of its major topics. It would definitely be a very dense read for someone with no or little biology training.

[Kristien · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Nicholas Money's writing. It's very dry, but often also funny. I learned a lot from this little book. I think Lynn Margulis deserves to be mentioned, though.