Welcome to Microbiology@Morningside!

Potential essay questions for the final exam

1. How does antibiotic resistance occur? Pick one antibiotic from the list below, and describe how resistance to that drug occurs. Be sure to address what the target of the drug is, how evolution to antibiotic resistance occurs, and what human behaviors contribute to antibiotic resistance. (10 points)
• Vancomycin
• Penicillin
• Zithromax
• Tetracycline
• Ciprofloxacin
• Isoniazid
• Rifampin
• Augmentin (amoxicillin-clavulanic acid)

2. Ewald’s hypothesis predicts that, in general, pathogens evolve towards reduced virulence in their primary host. Is this hypothesis more likely to be true or false, based on what you know about host-pathogen interactions? Be sure to cite specific relationships between at least two pathogens and their hosts.

3. Bacteria have lots of genes, but not all of them are expressed all the time. Pick two of the examples below, and explain how that bacteria changes its gene expression in changing circumstances. Be sure to specifically mention which genes are turned on and turned off, and why the differential regulation of these genes is advantageous to the bacteria in question.
Bacillus subtilis control of competence
Yersinia pestis control of virulence factor expression
Pseudomonas aeruginosa control of biofilm formation

4. Describe your independent research project and what you have learned from it addressing the following questions:
a. What was your hypothesis? What makes your hypothesis a scientific claim?
b. What evidence would have disproved your hypothesis?
c. Was your hypothesis disproven or supported, or do you lack enough information to say? If the latter, why?
d. If you had this experiment to do over again, how would you change it to provide better results?
e. What other research projects do your research results suggest?

Lab Report 3 Papers are due on Dec. 15th by noon!!!!

Mackenzie

The Velveteen Rabbit

An online full-text version, with pictures, can be found here.

The video about viral replication we watched on Monday 11/24:

HIV video on YouTube here

We'll talk more about viral replication on Monday 12/1.


On this site, students in BIO 252: Microbiology at Morningside College can post papers, lecture notes and other miscellany related to class. Peer review of research reports will occur via this site. Lecture notes can be shared among students by filling in the lecture note outlines posted here.

All work on this site is copyright of its original authors, as signed on the individual pages. All work is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 License.


Final lab report authorship clarification

Having graded a bunch of your second lab reports, I thought I should offer the following clarification about how many people are allowed to co-author a lab report. THE MAXIMUM NUMBER OF AUTHORS ON ANY LAB REPORT ARE THREE. This policy is the one that's laid on in the syllabus section on lab reports and research projects.

Now, if you've already turned in a lab report (i.e., Lab Report 2) with more than 3 authors on it, don't worry about it. My reiterating this policy now isn't going to affect your grade on Lab Report 2. However, I won't accept final lab reports of your original research projects with more than 3 authors.

Of course, you're still allowed to (and encouraged to!) collaborate with students who are doing similar research projects. You may share protocols, data, and references. When you turn in your final lab report including your protocol and data & documentation, these sections (protocol and data/documentation) may be identical to those turned in by another group working on the same project. (i.e. You don't have to worry about "plagiarizing" another group's protocol if you gathered data together using the same protocol. You don't have to artificially reword your protocol to avoid charges of "plagiarism" or anything like that.) You just shouldn't have more than 3 authors on the lab report itself, and the lab reports should be independently written by the separate groups of 3 or fewer students turning them in.

If you share data/protocols/etc. with another group of students (who aren't co-authors on your final lab report) be sure to add an "Acknowledgements" section following the Discussion section but preceding the References section of your lab report. In this Acknowledgements section, mention the first and last names of people who helped you with this research and thank them specifically for what they helped you with. For instance, "We would like to thank Barbara Fegley for help with troubleshooting gram-staining techniques. We would like to thank Eric Elsinghorst for assistance with writing the research protocol." Also, list in your Acknowledgements section any people outside of our microbiology class who might have helped you with your project as well. This would include any off-campus researchers you e-mailed who e-mailed you back with tips, or outside people or organizations that helped you with data collection. A sample Acknowledgements section can be seen on the MRSA poster of Beau & Colin's research from last year, which is hanging on the bulletin board right outside the microbiology lab room.

Hope this helps. Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Best,
DxRR


Note to students in BIO 252: When you post your original work (e.g., drafts of your research papers), you must sign the paper with the real first and last names of all of the contributing authors. You do not have to sign your additions or edits to others' papers or notes outlines, although you should put your name in the "short description of changes" box below the main editing box whenever you do edit a page.

Links to cited journal articles should be provided within the text of your posted research papers. For this reason, I strongly recommend that you cite only open-access journals so that all of your readers are able to follow your links.


Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License