03-392: Microbiology Laboratory

In this new Interdisciplinary Microbiology Laboratory course, you will learn how the limits of SIZE of microbes define laboratory approaches employed to study them. To this end, you will gain experimental experience with key concepts in microbiology (eg: taxonomy, antibiotic resistance, changes in morphology, secretion of metabolites into media, plasmids, medical implications, etc.); however, you will explore these concepts in the lab by using both standard and nonstandard state-of-the-art equipment (eg: flow cytometer, atomic force microscope, fluorescence/bright-field/phase-contrast light microscope, light scattering, etc.). You will also learn about metabolic control theory by use of the program "Metabologica," which was written by Prof. Mike Domach of the Chemical Engineering Department, to predict metabolic changes of a mutant microbe and then test the predictions in the lab. Also, you will learn how to use the program Mathematica to determine how well your laboratory data fit to mathematical growth models. Thus, 03-392 will combine traditional and quantitative empirical laboratory approaches to study some aspects of the microbiological world. Co requisites: 03-391 OR special permission from Instructor

Spring: Mini-Session – 6 units
Prerequisites: None
Corequisites: 03-391