stuffing wrote:

nathanielandbartimaeus wrote:

stuffing wrote:Nathanielandbartimaeus, are you a microbiologist? Because so am I, and that would be the weirdest coincidence.

Hey, nice to have someone else doing microbiology here! But are you a microbiologist, as in, you work or do research or something? I'm just studying microbiology. I finished two years of it (BSc). So no, I won't call myself a microbiologist. If I complete my MSc in it, possibly :P. But I'm planning to do molecular biology for my MSc (provided I enter and pass my TYBSc).

And call me n&b. And I see you are a Canadian. We have loads of them here :P .

That's because Canadians are awesome. ;) I'm still in school too, graduating next semester. Nice to meet you!

Hey, mind if I ask you some questions? I don't meet many people who learn microbiology (barring the people studying in my department, of course) and I would like to hear some of your views and answers. So here goes;
What experiments do y'all usually perform in the lab? How is your subject divided? Like, biochemistry, medical microbiology, microbial genetics and so on? What books do y'all refer (author's name please)? Or do y'all have a standard textbook? I think, in two years, we were asked to refer some 50 books. And finally, what part of microbiology do you like best?

nathanielandbartimaeus wrote:Hey, mind if I ask you some questions? I don't meet many people who learn microbiology (barring the people studying in my department, of course) and I would like to hear some of your views and answers. So here goes;
What experiments do y'all usually perform in the lab? How is your subject divided? Like, biochemistry, medical microbiology, microbial genetics and so on? What books do y'all refer (author's name please)? Or do y'all have a standard textbook? I think, in two years, we were asked to refer some 50 books. And finally, what part of microbiology do you like best?

I hope its okay to go a bit off topic here and bore everyone with science talk. If not, my apologies!

I think in all my time at University we've done around seven lab courses, so not too many actually. But as for the techniques we've been able to try our hands at - lots of bacterial (and fungal) culturing techniques, Traditional and rapid bacterial identification, light and phase microscopy, gel electrophoresis, SDS-PAGE, umm...we did some plasmid cloning...I don't know, I probably couldn't list it all. They also offer a virology lab I haven't taken that would probably be cool. I'm not a Masters student, so I haven't been involved in any research labs, I'm afraid.

The courses we have to take include biochemistry, molecular biology, bacterial genetics, mycology, virology, pathogenic bacteriology, environmental microbiology and lots more.

Also, I'm in the co-op program, which means I have work semesters as well as school semesters where I get to work in the field. It's awesome because you get experience and make money to pay for school at the same time. :)

The microbiology courses usually use Brock's Biology of Microorganisms or Prescott's Principles of Microbiology. Other courses like biochem and such have there own textbooks of course as well, I can't remember their titles off the top of my head. But fifty? Ouch that must be expensive! I have to admit, I don't always buy the required books because most of my professors use journal articles as background material and I can get those for free through the university library.

I've always found pathogens the most interesting, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm going to end up in food microbiology. It seems like that's where the jobs are over here!

Again, I apologize for being off topic!

wrote:If your view of urban is 10th century urban than yes, it is likely urban fantasy.

Welcome, btw. I too am from the magical and wonderful place known as Canada.

Thanks for the welcome, fellow Canuck! So then do you think the prequel will take place in the tenth century?

I just found this summary on Amazon:
Bartimaeus, everyone's favorite (wise-cracking) djinni, is back in book four of this best-selling series. As alluded to in the footnotes throughout the series, Bartimaeus has served hundreds of magicians during his 5,010 year career. Now, for the first time, fans will go back in time with the djinni, to Jerusalem and the court of King Solomon in 950s BC. Only in this adventure, it seems the great Bartimaeus has finally met his match. He'll have to contend with an unpleasant master and his sinister servant, and runs into just a "spot" of trouble with King Solomon's magic ring...

So it looks like it really will take place in Solomon's time! I betcha that legend I mentioned is going to come into play...

stuffing wrote:

nathanielandbartimaeus wrote:Hey, mind if I ask you some questions? I don't meet many people who learn microbiology (barring the people studying in my department, of course) and I would like to hear some of your views and answers. So here goes;
What experiments do y'all usually perform in the lab? How is your subject divided? Like, biochemistry, medical microbiology, microbial genetics and so on? What books do y'all refer (author's name please)? Or do y'all have a standard textbook? I think, in two years, we were asked to refer some 50 books. And finally, what part of microbiology do you like best?

I hope its okay to go a bit off topic here and bore everyone with science talk. If not, my apologies!

I think in all my time at University we've done around seven lab courses, so not too many actually. But as for the techniques we've been able to try our hands at - lots of bacterial (and fungal) culturing techniques, Traditional and rapid bacterial identification, light and phase microscopy, gel electrophoresis, SDS-PAGE, umm...we did some plasmid cloning...I don't know, I probably couldn't list it all. They also offer a virology lab I haven't taken that would probably be cool. I'm not a Masters student, so I haven't been involved in any research labs, I'm afraid.

The courses we have to take include biochemistry, molecular biology, bacterial genetics, mycology, virology, pathogenic bacteriology, environmental microbiology and lots more.

Also, I'm in the co-op program, which means I have work semesters as well as school semesters where I get to work in the field. It's awesome because you get experience and make money to pay for school at the same time. :)

The microbiology courses usually use Brock's Biology of Microorganisms or Prescott's Principles of Microbiology. Other courses like biochem and such have there own textbooks of course as well, I can't remember their titles off the top of my head. But fifty? Ouch that must be expensive! I have to admit, I don't always buy the required books because most of my professors use journal articles as background material and I can get those for free through the university library.

I've always found pathogens the most interesting, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm going to end up in food microbiology. It seems like that's where the jobs are over here!

It is okay if we go off-topic once a while as far as we don't spam :D.

Well, y'all do courses? That is nice. We have lab periods. 10 hours per week for microbiology. BTW, I'm doing chemistry too. And I could possibly choose it for my third year. But, in all probabilities, I would go with microbiology.
We do a lot of culturing too. And we did a lot of staining and microscopic techniques in the first year, and then photoelectric meter, spectroscopy, centrifugation, nephelometer tubes, pH meter and so on. In the second year, it has been more of milk analysis, sugar and salt tolerance, TDP and TDT, enzyme assay, estimation, qualitative tests, pyocin typing, overlay methods and all. Yeah, we did gel electrophoresis and SDS-PAGE too. I particularly like them. But no plasmid cloning yet.

Hmm, lot of courses. For me, it is like sub-subjects. This year we had three. Immunology and genetics, biochemistry, industrial microbiology and biotechnology.

Man, hope we had something that lets us work in the field too. Actually, there are a couple of things (but they are not organized by my college/university) where you write exams and get selected and work as a research student and earn money. But I haven't done any such. But I did do a summer course on molecular biology last vacation. Was loads of fun. I wanted to continue it this vacation, but I'm going out.

And we did have a huge project this year.We had to isolate a microorganism from any natural source and identify it. We used lake water sample with the hope of finding Aeromonas hydrophila. We got quite a pure cultures but we went ahead identified only the yellow colonies. We studied the colony and it turned out to be a Micrococcus spp. We then did biochemical tests (Bergey's manual was so useful!) and finally identified it as Micrococcus varians. We actually wanted a rare species but this was okay. The project went on for over eight months and though taxing (I used to spend over 10 hours in college daily), I enjoyed it a lot.

About books, no we don't buy them. We have a book bank in the department. We just deposit a very small sum every year to use it. We take books from it weekly. And the library is free. I just bought one microbiology book - Pelczar (which we hardly used - just for one chapter). We too use Prescott and Brock a lot. Apart from that, Tortora, Frobisher, Stanier, Salle, Conn & Stumph, Lehninger, Plummer, Atlas & Bartha, Talaro, Frazier, Freifelder, Russel, William & Wilson, Palmer, Kuby, Watson, Vogel, Morris, Cassida, Seagel, Norris & Ribbons, Blackett and a lot, lot more. These books are for basic microbiology, environmental microbiology, bacteriology, immunology, instrumentation, fermentation, dairy microbiology, molecular biology, statistics, estimations, enzymology etc.

Interested in food microbiology? Read James Jay. It is specifically for that. I had a chapter on it last term and the book was pretty useful.

OMG, what a big post!

now explain paleobotany! This is fun.

nathanielandbartimaeus wrote:[And we did have a huge project this year.We had to isolate a microorganism from any natural source and identify it. We used lake water sample with the hope of finding Aeromonas hydrophila. We got quite a pure cultures but we went ahead identified only the yellow colonies. We studied the colony and it turned out to be a Micrococcus spp. We then did biochemical tests (Bergey's manual was so useful!) and finally identified it as Micrococcus varians. We actually wanted a rare species but this was okay. The project went on for over eight months and though taxing (I used to spend over 10 hours in college daily), I enjoyed it a lot.

Oops, I think we're in trouble for derailing the book four discussion thread. :$

That sounds like a cool project! We did something similar in third year, but we only identified our organisms down to the genus level. It was pretty cool because you could take your sample from wherever you wanted. One of the groups swabbed a fishtank in the grocery store and ended up with potential Yersinia pseudotuberculosis!

OMG. But chances of human infections there are somewhat less, so it is still okay. We were asked to keep off pathogenic organisms, but how could one know what they got till the end? But we didn't end up with anything dangerous. I think a group a few years ago got a highly virulent strain which they had to discard immediately and there was clean-up and all.

---

Oh, and do y'all wear a lot of protective gloves, goggles and all?