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Microbiology (from Ancient Greek μῑκρος (mīkros) 'small' βίος (bíos) 'life' and -λογία () 'study of') is the scientific study of microorganisms, those being of unicellular (single-celled), multicellular (consisting of complex cells), or acellular (lacking cells).
Medical microbiology, the large subset of microbiology that is applied to medicine, is a branch of medical science concerned with the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases. In addition, this field of science studies various clinical applications of microbes for the improvement of health.
This subdivision of microbiology involves the identification, classification, and characterization of bacterial species. [1] Because of the similarity of thinking and working with microorganisms other than bacteria, such as protozoa, fungi, and viruses, there has been a tendency for the field of bacteriology to extend as microbiology. [2]
Virus and phage cultures require host cells in which the virus or phage multiply. For bacteriophages, cultures are grown by infecting bacterial cells. The phage can then be isolated from the resulting plaques in a lawn of bacteria on a plate. Viral cultures are obtained from their appropriate eukaryotic host cells.
Microbes.info is a microbiology information portal containing a vast collection of resources including articles, news, frequently asked questions, and links pertaining to the field of microbiology. Our Microbial Planet Archived 15 February 2013 at the Wayback Machine A free poster from the National Academy of Sciences about the positive roles ...
Many viruses can be grown in cell culture in the lab. To do this, the virus sample is mixed with cells, a process called adsorption, after which the cells become infected and produce more copies of the virus. [3]
Viruses display a wide diversity of sizes and shapes, called 'morphologies'. In general, viruses are much smaller than bacteria and more than a thousand bacteriophage viruses would fit inside an Escherichia coli bacterium's cell. [39]: 98 Many viruses that have been studied are spherical and have a diameter between 20 and 300 nanometres.
Serial passage is the process of growing bacteria or a virus in iterations. For instance, a virus may be grown in one environment, and then a portion of that virus population can be removed and put into a new environment.