Slide rack is a piece of vessel used for packing and storing clean glass slides after they have been used for staining. After staining, it is important to wash the glass slides with soap/detergents under running water. The washed glass slides are carefully inserted into the slide rack (Figure 1) where the excess water on […]
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Microbe Lab, Techniques in Microbiology Lab
Petri dishes are shallow glass or plastic plates that are cylindrical in shape, and which are used to cultivate microorganisms in the microbiology laboratory. Glass Petri dishes are heat-stable and can be sterilized in the autoclave and re-used over a long period of time. But plastic Petri dishes (disposable) cannot be re-used or autoclaved because
Anaerobic digestion is simply defined as the anaerobic breakdown of complex materials of animal or plant origin to simpler substances by microbes. It is the process in which complex organic matter are completely degraded to a mixture of solid and gaseous end products in the absence of oxygen and with the help of a diverse
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Environmental & Soil Microbiology, Industrial Microbiology
The expression “phenotypic” is from the word phenotype, which means “the observable characteristics of an organism”. It describes the physical features of an organism in terms of its morphology, motility, colour and shape amongst other noticeable attributes that are typical to a particular organism. Thus, the phenotypic detection and characterization of antimicrobial resistant genes in
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Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (AST) & Antibiogram, Pharmaceutical Microbiology
Aside penicillins and cephalosporins, other beta-lactam antibiotics used for clinical applications also exist. These beta-lactam antibiotics have expanded antibacterial activity, and they are often used to treat infections caused by bacterial pathogens that are resistant to the penicillins and cephalosporins. Antibiotics in this category are generally cell wall synthesis inhibitors, and they possess similar mechanisms
Gene therapy is an experimental discipline or research that uses functional gene (i.e. therapeutic DNA) to repair defective genes in genetic disease patients; and this growing field of molecular medicine is usually undertaken using modified nucleic acid molecules through a series of steps. Conventional medicine utilizes oral and parenteral drug administration as well as surgery
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Gene Therapy Notes
The antibiotics described above including those not described in this work are used to treat infections caused by disease causing microorganisms (bacteria). Majority of them exert a highly selective toxic action upon their target microbial cells but have little or no toxicity towards mammalian cells. These antibiotics can therefore be administered at concentrations sufficient enough
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Antimicrobial Agents & Antibiotics, Pharmaceutical Microbiology
Genomic DNA is a double helix structure that is composed of several components including purines (adenine and guanine) and pyrimidines (cytosine and thymine) as nitrogenous bases, deoxyribose sugar (a pentose sugar) and phosphate groups. It is a large nucleic acid molecule composed mainly of two polynucleotide chains or strands that are coiled in a complementary
Parasitic diseases are usually common in rainforest parts of the world (the tropical and subtropical regions) because such environment favour the existence of the causative agents of such infections. For example, malaria caused by Plasmodium species is more prevalent in tropical and subtropical regions than in temperate regions where the environmental condition is cold and
A pyrogen is simply defined as a fever-causing (inducing) agent that includes toxins of microorganisms. The phrase “pyrogens” is derived from the Greek word “Pyros” to mean “Fire”. Pyrogens are the lipopolysaccharide (LPS) component or endotoxins of bacteria especially Gram negative organisms. They also include the cell wall components of both Gram negative and Gram
