Contributions of Golden Age of Microbiology - Coursework Example

Contributions of “Golden Age of Microbiology” Introduction: The exact duration of golden age of microbiology is a topic still under dispute. Most microbiologists have the opinion that the golden age started in 1857 when Pasteur proved with his experiments the germ theory of disease. According to many researchers the golden era made itself into early twentieth century and ended before the starting of World War I. This golden era saw a fierce battle of microbial research between the two countries, France and Germany which lead to many discoveries that the future generations benefited. Twentieth century saw microbiology research spreading beyond the borders of France and Germany, thus gaining an international reputation to be a research field of public importance as it included the study of human diseases. The major contributions in this golden age were given by two eminent scientists, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch. Both these Scientist are considered the fathers of microbiology with respect to their contributions to science. Louis Pasteur initiated the vaccine technology: A vaccine is a formulation which contains a component of the disease causing organism in a weakened form, which on administration to an individual can bring in an immune response against the disease. “The first experiment in immunization was performed by Louis Pasteur, a French chemist turned biologist, on July 6 1885, when he treated a young boy against rabies. He extracted fluid from the spinal cord of a rabid dog and injected it in small amounts to the body, who was bitten by a rabid dog.” (Vaccine development: History and progress of vaccine development, n.d.). The success of rabies vaccination by Louis generated an interest in the scientific world for further research to find vaccines for other diseases. A subcutaneously administrated vaccine was developed by Ferran in the year 1894. The 20th century saw an enormous rise in the area of vaccine development and the period between 1950 and 1970 is projected as the golden era of vaccine research. “In 1954 Jonas Salk developed a killed polio virus as vaccine that decreased paralysis cases from 20,000 in 1952 to 1,600 in 1960. Oral polio vaccine was developed by Alfred Sabin which was easy to take and was successful in eliminating the spread of polio.” (A history of vaccine development, 2007). The development of small pox vaccine during the 1960s was a success story which removed the disease from the face of earth. In recent times cancer vaccine has also reached the global market, the Human papilloma Virus (HPV) causes cervical cancer and it is globally the second most prevalent cancer in women. HPV vaccines produced by companies like Merk and Gardasil have proved to be effective in providing long term immunity against infection by HPV. The hunt for a potent HIV vaccine is still under research, clinical trials are under progress to prove the safety and efficiency of the vaccine. “In the 21st century vaccines have made it possible to eradicate the scourge of small pox, promise the same for polio, and have profoundly reduced the threat posed by other diseases such as whooping cough, measles, and meningitis.” (Vaccine for the 21st century: A tool for decision making, 2010). Contribution of Robert Koch’s to Modern microbiology: Robert Koch have significant contribution in the development of microbiology in golden age. He put forward principles and methods to study microorganism which is used in the modern world. “In 1877 Koch published an important paper on the investigation, preservation and photographing of bacteria. In his paper he described his method of preparing thin layers of bacteria on glass slides and fixing them by gentle heat.” (Koch 2010). These techniques later turned to be the milestones in bacteriology in identifying and studying microbes. The credit for inventing the hanging drop technique also go to Koch, which is used widely for cultivating bacteria in drops of nourishing solution. He associated diseases with microorganisms and led to the development of modern microbiology. “Koch formulated rules for the control of epidemics of cholera are still the basic procedures used by modern epidemiologists and medical researchers : (1) Identify a specific organism, (2) obtain a pure culture of that organism (3) reproduce the disease in experimental animals using the pure culture, and (4) recover the organism from the infected animal.” (Pearce 2004). He stated the importance of sterilization of surgical equipments and established the procedures mandatory in disinfection and sterilization. He established the use of gelatin and agar as a rigid medium for growth of microbes and described the use of analine as a good staining agent to observe microbes under microscope. These contributions by Koch are still used in laboratories. The evolution of Enzyme technology and a better understanding of Fermentation: “Louis Pasteur through a series of classic investigations in the 1850s and 1960s proved conclusively that fermentation was initiated by living organism. In 1857 Pasteur showed that lactic acid fermentation is caused by living organism.” (Shurtleff & Aoyagi 2007). He concluded from his study on sugar fermentation by yeast that alcoholic fermentation is a process carried out by live yeast with the help of certain components present inside yeast. Wilhem kuhne in 1878 put forward the word “enzyme”. “In 1897 Eduard buchner published his work on “alcoholic fermentation without yeast cells” and he was awarded the Nobel prize in 1907 for his biochemical investigations and his discovery of non cellular fermentation.” (Buchner 1907). These major finding made in the golden era of microbiology laid the first stone to the future developments in the field of enzymology. Eduard Buchner proved experimentally that enzymes can be present outside the microbial cell to perform its action. Buchner’s work revealed that microbial enzymes were the reason behind fermentation. This lead many scientists to work on the biochemical nature of enzymes. Harden and young (1905) conducted experiments and established the role of coenzmes for the action of enzymes. Later three scientist James. B. Summer, Northrop and Stanley received the Noble prize in 1946 for experimentally proving that enzymes are pure proteins. The advance of various technologies like X-ray crystallography, Chromatography, electron microscopy, NMR spectroscopy in the 20th century aided further research on enzymes. In 1930s a wide range of research studies put forward that genetic makeup of an organism can be manipulated using physical or chemical methods. These methods were employed to produce efficient microbes for fermentation which produced greater yield of desired product, microbes resistant to high/low pH and less oxygen. Fermentation industries developed new strains of efficient microbes using hybridization and genetically manipulated strains of microbes were also produced. The research on microbial enzymes became intense in the 20th century, which lead to elucidation of the structure and functions of various enzymes like Restriction enzymes, DNA ligase, DNA polymerase, Exonucleases involved in DNA enzymology. “Arthur Korenburg and colleagues isolated DNA plomerase from Escherichia coli in 1955, B. Weiss and C.C Richardson isolated DNA ligase from microbes in 1966, and H.O Smith, K.W Wilcox and T.J Kelley isolated and characterized the first sequence specific restriction nuclease of microbial origin. These enzymes made it possible to create entirely new kinds of DNA molecules and equally important to manipulate the functioning of genes.” (Restriction enzymes background paper, n.d). The two new enzymes, Restriction nucleases and ligases lead to the origin of a new field called Recombinant DNA (rDNA) technology. rDNA technology was used to produce insulin from Escherichia coli by cloning the constructed insulin gene into the bacterium. This technology was also used to produce various other proteins like Human growth hormone, Somatostatin, hepatitis vaccine in microbes. Evolution of virology: The intense research on microbes in the golden age of microbiology opened up many new sub branches and one of them was virology. “Virology had its beginning in 1982 when Dmitri Ivanowaski showed that organism responsible for tobacco mosaic disease was able to pass through filters that stopped all known bacteria. Stanely (1935) later demonstrated that this organism was fundamentally different from other known organisms and could even be crystallized.” (Microbiology super review, 2000). The secrets of virology came into light with the invention of electron microscopes and X-ray crystallography. Bernal and Fankuchen (1941) worked on viruses and published the X-ray diffraction photos of the smallest living organism known at that time and Rosalind Franklin (1955) first revealed the genetic build up of the virus. The last half of the twentieth century introduced different types of viruses and this period is known as the golden age of viruses. Viruses were used as tools to study various biochemical events in the cell such as DNA synthesis, RNA production, transcription and translation. Currently virus are also employed as vehicles to transport genes into desired host cell and possible future uses of virus in treatment of diseases like cancer is under research study. “Reverse transcriptase also called RNA-directed DNA polymerase an enzyme encoded from the genetic material of retroviruses that catalyzes the transcription of retrovirus RNA into DNA. This enzyme catalyzed transcription in the reverse process.” (Reverse transcript, 2010). Reverse transcriptase is of great importance in PCR reactions where in the enzyme will synthesize DNA from RNA molecules and the resultant DNA will be amplified by DNA polymerase. “Phages are viruses that infect bacterial cells and many of the vectors used in recombinant DNA research are phages that infect the standard recombinant DNA host: the bacterium Escherichia coli. A phage display library is a heterogeneous mixture of phage clones, each carrying a different foreign DNA insert and therefore displaying a different peptide on its surface.” (Smith & Petrenko 1997, p.392). Phage display is of high importance in the current research area and is used in analyzing a wide range of peptides. Conclusion: The golden age of microbiology saw an intense research in biology and it lead to the evolution of microbiology. This era gave rise usage of many new terms like “enzymes”, “Biochemistry” and “Immunology”. The vaccine development took off to a new level with the success of Pasteur’s experiment, even though Edward Jenner in 1976 laid down the idea of vaccination the research on vaccines were not full fledged. Vaccination programmes were conducted in many countries which lead to the eradication of some diseases. The basic idea behind fermentation was revealed and the important roles of microbial enzymes in various other industries were fully exploited. The discoveries of enzymes lead to a revolution in biology which gradually lead to the emergence of Genetic engineering. Genetic manipulation with enzymes showed promise to various problems related to human diseases, plant diseases. Reference List A history of vaccine development, 2007. [Online] KidsGrowth.com. Available at: http://www.kidsgrowth.com/resources/articledetail.cfm?id=1372 [Accessed 27 April 2010]. Buchner, E., 1907. Biography. [Online] Nobelprize.org. Available at: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1907/buchner-bio.html [Accessed 27 April 2010]. Koch, R., 2010. Anthrax research. [Online] Encyclopedia Britannica.com. Available at: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/320834/Robert-Koch/214644/Contributions-to-general-bacteriology-and-pathology [Accessed 27 April 2010]. Microbiology super review, 2000. [Online] Research & Educational Assoc. Available at: http://books.google.co.in/books?id=VCE5DX3LGQUC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=discoveries+in+golden+age+of+microbiology&source=bl&ots=C8Zk7gn1aQ&sig=XQoFwMasRZ6ySXLpTWT6LP0XobI&hl=en&ei=gY7WS9f9JoO0rAeg8LW1Bw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CB0Q6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=discoveries%20in%20golden%20age%20of%20microbiology&f=false [Accessed 27 April 2010]. Pearce, D., 2004. Robert Koch. [Online] BLTC. Available at: http://www.general-anaesthesia.com/images/robert-koch.html [Accessed 27 April 2010]. Restriction enzymes background paper, n.d. [Online] National Health Museum. Available at: http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEC/CC/restriction.php [Accessed 27 April 2010]. Reverse transcript, 2010. [Online] Encyclopedia Britannica.com. Available at: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/500460/reverse-transcriptase [Accessed 27 April 2010]. Shurtleff, W., & Aoyagi, A., 2007. A brief history of fermentation, east and west. [Online] Soyinfo Center. Available at: http://www.soyinfocenter.com/HSS/fermentation.php [Accessed 27 April 2010]. Smith, GP., & Petrenko, VA., 1997. Phage Display. [Online] American Chemical Society, p.392. Available at: http://www.biosci.missouri.edu/smithGP/PhageDisplayWebsite/PetrenkoSmithChemReviews.PDF [Accessed 27 April 2010]. Vaccine development: History and progress of vaccine development, n.d. [Online] www.Molecular-Plant-Biotechnology.info. Available at: http://www.molecular-plant-biotechnology.info/immune-systems-antibodies-interferons-vaccines/history-and-progress-of-vaccine-development.htm [Accessed 27 April 2010]. Vaccine for the 21st century: A tool for decision making, 2010. [Online] National Academy of Sciences. Available at: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=5501#description [Accessed 27 April 2010]. Read More