Thursday, October 05, 2006
Microbiology
Microbiology is the study of microorganisms, which are unicellular or cell-cluster microscopic organisms. This includes eukaryotes with a nucleus such as fungi and protists, and prokaryotes without a nucleus such as bacteria and viruses though viruses are not strictly classed as living organisms.
Although much is now known in the field of microbiology, advances are being made regularly. The most common estimates suggest that we have studied only about 1% of all of the microbes in any given environment. Thus, despite the fact that over three hundred years have passed since the discovery of microbes, the field of microbiology is clearly in its infancy relative to other biological disciplines such as zoology, botany or even entomology.
The field of bacteriology later a subdiscipline of microbiology is generally considered to have been founded by Ferdinand Cohn (1828-1898), a botanist whose studies on algae and photosynthetic bacteria led him to describe several bacteria including Bacillus and Beggiatoa. Ferdinand Cohn was also the first to formulate a scheme for the taxonomic classification of bacteria.
# posted by faburous @ 12:02 AM 
