A Review of Microbiology: an Evolving Science

doi:10.1128/jmbe.v11i2.226

Vida R. Irani , PhD
Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA, E-mail:
virani@iup.edu .

Microbiology: an Evolving Science. 1^st ed. Joan L. Slonczewski and John W. Foster; (2008) . W.W. Norton and Company, New York. 1280 pages.

This introductory student textbook aims to balance the coverage of medical microbiology with microbial ecology. It is divided into five parts: “The Microbial Cell,” “Genes and Genomes,” “Metabolism and Biochemistry,” “Microbial Diversity and Ecology,” and “Medicine and Immunology.” My training in microbiology and its various fields (genomics, proteomics, infectious diseases and immunology), as well as my teaching experience at a predominantly undergraduate institution, has helped in my review of this text. The main criterion for evaluating this book was to determine whether the authors projected a complete picture of the various aspects of microbiology, sufficient enough to help students understand this science and to pique the interest of a budding scientist/microbiologist.

Overall, I found this to be a solid and well-written book. I will address some aspects of organization and coverage that one looks for when planning a course and choosing a text. To start with, instead of including them as initial chapters, the authors use an appendix for coverage of fundamentals such as “chemistry of life” and “cell structure.” This may suit the needs of many instructors; however, it may feel like an omission to others. In addition, this is a very long book with perhaps more detailed information than is necessary at the introductory level. For example, details about proton motive force, pathogenicity islands, and the M13 phage pathway could be eliminated without significantly changing the value of the text.

In a text such as this one, many instructors look to see how topics about disease and medical applications are integrated into the chapters. In some texts (such as Microbiology: Principles and Explorations , 7^th ed. by Beck, and Microbiology: a Systems Approach , 2^nd ed. by Cowan and Talaro), medical microbiology and immunology are explained thoroughly in discrete chapters, and then brought together in a chapter that deals with microbe-human interactions. The authors of this book stress that they have taken “the physician-scientist” approach to microbial disease, where “the approach stresses the concepts of infectious disease rather than presenting an exhaustive recitation of diseases and microbes”. This is a worthwhile endeavor and, of course, a matter of instructor preference.

Some small additions would be welcome. For example, it would be helpful if there was an illustration of the human anatomy in the medical microbiology section. In addition, the specific location of a disease is, in some cases, not identified. For example, diphtheria is an “upper respiratory tract” disease, whereas tuberculosis and pneumonia are “lower respiratory tract” diseases. The authors have focused on some bacterial and viral diseases but have not mentioned any fungal, protozoan or helminthic diseases, which are also caused by microbes and are typically discussed, at least to some extent, in many allied health microbiology courses. Further, in spite of the book’s length and attention to details on some topics, there is little coverage of important areas such as disease transmission and prevention, epidemiology, or vaccines.

A reorganization of this book would perhaps make it a better text for biology and health science majors. As it stands, the structure may not allow students to link individual topics into a coherent whole as well as they might with a different scheme of organization. For example, the basics of genetics (replication, transcription, translation and regulation), as well as the structure and function of viruses, might be better addressed in single, stand-alone chapters as opposed to being spread out across the book. Also chapters about origins and evolution; bacterial, archaean and eukaryotic diversity; and biogeochemical cycles may serve students better if introduced earlier in the book where they can be more directly related to phylogenetic trees and bacterial types.

Despite the above, this is a well-written, accurate and comprehensive text. But any instructor – with many such texts now available to choose from – will look to compare organizational structure, topic coverage and level of detail when making a course choice. It is to be hoped that this review will help when making such a choice.

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JMBE
ISSN: 1935-7885

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Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education

A Review of Microbiology: an Evolving Science