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This title is an essential primer for all students who need some background in microbiology and want to become familiar with the universal importance of bacteria for all forms of life. Written by Gerhard Gottschalk, Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and one of the most prominent microbiologists in our time, this text covers the topic in its whole breadth and does not only focus on bacteria as pathogens.
The book is written in an easy-to-read, entertaining style but each chapter also contains a 'facts' section with compact text and diagrams for easy learning. In addition, more than 40 famous scientists, including several Nobel Prize winners, contributed sections, written specifically for this title. The book comes with color figures and a companion website with questions and answers.
Preface
Prologue
READING SECTION
1 Extremely small but incredibly active
2 Bacteria are organisms like you and me
3 My name is LUCA
4 From the Big Bang to LUCA
5 O2
6 Life in boiling water
7 Life in the Dead Sea
8 Bacteria and archaea are everywhere
9 The power of photosynthesis, even in almost complete darkness
10 Man and his microbes
11 Without bacteria there is no protein
12 Napoleon's victory gardens
13 Alessandro Volta's and George Washington's combustible air
14 Microbes as climate makers
15 How a state was founded with the aid of Clostridium acetobutylicum
16 Pulque, wine, and biofuel
17 Energy conservation from renewable resources
18 Cheese and vinegar
19 The periodic table of bioelements
20 Bacterial sex life
21 Bacteria can also catch viruses
22 Antibiotics: from microorganisms, against microorganisms
23 Plasmids and resistances
24 Agrobacterium tumefaciens, a genetic engineer par excellence
25 Eco R1 and PCR - molecular biology at its finest
26 Interbacterial relationships
27 From life as a nomad to life as an endosymbiont
28 Bacteria as production factories
29 Plants, animals, and humans as food resources of bacteria
30 Viruses, chemicals causing epidemics?
31 The "-omics" era
32 Incredible microbes
Epilogue
STUDY GUIDE
Overview to the Study Guide
Microbial growth
Molecules that make up microbes
Evolution, from the RNA world to the tree of life
Archaea
Bacterial diversity
Membranes and energy
Carbon metabolism
Regulation of microbial metabolism
Genomes, genes, and gene transfer
In-depth study of four special topics
Selected literature
Glossary
Subject index of figures and tables
Index
Gerhard Gottschalk studied Chemistry at the Humboldt-University in Berlin. He finished his Ph.D. in Gottingen in 1963 and worked as a Post-Doc from 1964 ? 1966 at the Department of Biochemistry at University of California, Berkeley (USA). He became full professor for microbiology in Gottingen in 1970, where he worked until 2003. He was visting professor in UC Davis in 1973 und UC Berkeley in 1979, and was head of the laboratory for Genome analysis at the Institute for Microbiology and Genetics in Gottingen from 1999 to 2007. In 2010, he has been Professor Gottschalk is member of the Academy of Science of Gottingen, the Academy of Science Leopoldina and honorary member of the Israeli Society of Microbiology; he received the Philip-Morris-Price for cutting edge technology, the Winogradsdy-Medaille, the Emil von Behring-Price and the first class German National Medal of Honor; he was president of the Georg-August-Universitat Gottingen 1975 -1976, president of the Academy of Science of Gottingen 1998 - 2000, president of All European Academies (ALLEA) 1998 ? 2000 and president of the union of German academies of Science 2003 - 2007. in 2009, he became an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.
