Discover the World of Microbes (eBook)

A chemist by training, Gerhard Gottschalk received his PhD in microbiology in 1963 from the University of Göttingen, Germany, before becoming a post-doc at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1970 he was made a full professor for microbiology in Göttingen, where he also served as president between 1975 and 1976. He was a visiting professor in UC Davis in 1973 and UC Berkeley in 1979, and head of the Laboratory for Genome Analysis at the Institute of Microbiology and Genetics in Göttingen from 1999 to 2007. He has received numerous awards, including the Philip Morris Prize for cutting-edge technology, the Winogradsky Medal, the Emil von Behring Prize and the first class German National Medal of Honor. Professor Gottschalk is a member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, an honorary member of the Israeli Society of Microbiology, and a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. He was president of All European Academies (ALLEA) from 1998 to 2000 and president of the Union of German Academies of Sciences and Humanities from 2003 to 2007.

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