Dr. Cossart’s overview of the field of microbiology research, from infectious disease history to the ongoing scientific revolution resulting from CRISPR technologies, is presented in four parts.
- New concepts in microbiology introduces the world of bacteria and some recent discoveries about how they live, such as the role of regulatory RNAs including riboswitches, the CRISPR defense system, and resistance to antibiotics.
- Sociomicrobiology: the social lives of bacteria helps us see the new paradigm by which scientists view bacteria as highly social creatures that communicate in many ways, for example in the assemblies that reside in our intestine or in the environment.
- The biology of infections reviews some of history’s worst epidemics and describes current and emerging infectious diseases, the organisms that cause them, and how they produce an infection.
- Bacteria as tools introduces us to molecules derived from microbes that scientists have harnessed in the service of research and medicine, including the CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing technology.
The New Microbiology takes us on a journey through a remarkable revolution in science that is occurring here and now.
