INTRODUCTION TO APPLIED

1
INTRODUCTION TO APPLIED ENVIRONMENTAL
MICROBIOLOGY

• Lecture 1
• MB433 Spring 2009
• Gill Geesey

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Assignment 1

• Text reading assignment Chapter 1 2
• Be prepared to discuss in class on Wednesday Aug
  30th

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Applied Microbiology

• The exploitation of microorganisms, their
  activities, and their products for the benefit of
  society.

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Environmental Microbiology

• The study of microorganisms and their activities
  in the environment for the purpose of
  understanding their role in maintenance of the
  biosphere and their potential use in remediating
  sites that have been disturbed.

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Microbial Ecology

• Microbial Ecology is the study of interactions
  between populations of microorganisms and between
  microbial populations and organisms in other
  tropic levels

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Key events that led to the development of
Environmental Microbiology as a scientific
discipline

• Rachael Carson published Silent Spring bringing
  to the publics attention the poor condition of
  the environment
• Emergence of new waterborne and foodborne
  pathogens that posed human health threats
• New technologies emerged to study microbes in
  their natural environment rather than as pure
  cultures in the laboratory

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Hazardous waste/ bioremediation
Industrial microbiology
Soil microbiology
Food safety
Aero- microbiology
Environmental Microbiology
Occupational health/ Infection control
Aquatic microbiology
Water quality
Diagnostic microbiology
Biotechnology
stopped
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MICROORGANISMS IN THE ENVIRONMENT

• They are ubiquitous occur everywhere
• In and on the body
• Things we touch, use, eat and drink
• Wet surfaces biofilms
• Plants
• Deep subsurface
• Extraterrestrial?

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Microorganisms in the Environment

• Viruses animal plant pathogens,
  bacteriophages
• Prior to the advent of antibiotics, bacteriophage
  were being studied as antibacterial agents. Is
  this concept still applicable today?
• Bacteria pathogens commensals many are
  saprophytic, some chemolithotrophic, some
  photosynthetic

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Microorganisms in the Environment

• Archaea
• Algae primary producers, some pathogens
• Fungi from microscopic to macroscopic
• Protozoa parasites saprophytes

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Environmental Monitoring

• ChallengeDefine microbial community structure
  and function under in-situ conditions
• Isolating microorganisms from their natural state
  and studying them in an artificial lab
  environment is no longer necessary. Why?
• Isolation of one population from another
  consorting population may be impossible...

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Monitoring approaches

• Molecular methods... Are they the gold standard?
• No one approach is free of bias
• Best strategy is to use several independent
  approaches and compare results

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Modern Environmental Microbiology

• Discovery and identification of new microbes,
  microbial activities, and microbial products that
  protect environment
• Use microbial products as pesticides to replace
  chemical pesticides with long resident time in
  environment. Example of such a product?
• Microbially enhanced oil recovery. Example of a
  product?
• Microbially enhanced mineral recovery. Example?
• Bioremediation