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МИНЕСТЕРСТВО СЕЛЬСКОГО ХОЗЯЙСТВА РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ

ФЕДЕРАЛЬНОЕ АГЕНТСТВО ПО РЫБОЛОВСТВУ

ФЕДЕРАЛЬНОЕ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЕ ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ

ВЫСШЕГО ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ

"МУРМАНСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ТЕХНИЧЕСКИЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ"

Ионова В.Н.

The Tiny World around Us

Microbiology for University Students

Крошечный мир вокруг нас

Микробиология для студентов университетов

Допущено Учебным советом ФГОУВПО «МГТУ»

в качестве учебного пособия для студентов

специальности 012400 «Микробиология»

по дисциплине «Деловой английский язык»

Мурманск

2006

Аннотация к учебному пособию В.Н. Ионовой “ The Tiny World around Us. Microbiology for University Students”.

Пособие построено на научных и научно-популярных текстах, заимствованных из современной английской и американской литературы, включая периодические издания. Целью пособия является развитие навыков профессионально-ориентированной устной речи, расширение запаса общетематической и формирование словаря специальной лексики, развитие навыков чтения и перевода литературы по специальности.

Данное учебное пособие предназначено для студентов биологического факультета дневной, вечерней и заочной формы обучения.

This textbook is based upon the original texts taken from English and American scientific literature, including periodicals. The main aims of the textbook are to stimulate speaking on professional topics, to enlarge a basic and special vocabulary, to develop skills of reading and translating scientific literature.

The textbook is intended for full-time, part-time and correspondence course students of faculty of biology.

Оглавление

Part I

Unit 1 HISTORY OF MICROBIOLOGY. MICROORGANISMS.

Unit 2 METHODS OF STUDYING MICROORGANISMS

Unit 3 CURRENT RESEARCH  IN MICROBIOLOGY

Unit 4 LOUIS PASTEUR

Part II

Unit 1 EUKARYOTIC CELL

Unit 2 PROKARYOTIC CELL

Unit 3 PROTISTA

ADDITIONAL GRAMMAR EXERCISES

SUPPLEMENTARY TEXTS

Предисловие

Данное учебное пособие предназначено для работы со студентами старших курсов биологического факультета университета, обучающимися по специальности «Микробиология». Целью пособия является совершенствование и закрепление, а также дальнейшее развитие умений и навыков владения английским языком, приобретенных на младших курсах. Задачами пособия являются расширение запаса общетематической и формирование словаря специальной лексики; развитие и совершенствование умений и навыков ведения беседы на темы, близкие будущей профессиональной деятельности, чтения и перевода научно-популярной литературы; повторение и закрепление грамматического материала; развитие умений и навыков реферирования и аннотирования.

Пособие состоит из двух частей. Научно-популярные тексты, связанные общей тематикой, объединены в разделы (units). В упражнениях, которые сопровождают каждый текст, закрепляется тематическая лексика, совершенствуются навыки монологической и диалогической речи. Каждый раздел содержит комплекс грамматических упражнений, которые закрепляют грамматические явления, встречающиеся в текстах. Кроме этого, в пособие включены статьи и доклады, взятые из специализированных периодических изданий, которые могут быть использованы в качестве материала для индивидуального чтения.

Данное пособие может быть использовано как для работы в аудитории, так и для самостоятельной работы студентов дневной, заочной и вечерней формы обучения.

UNIT 1

HISTORY OF MICROBIOLOGY. MICROORGANISMS.

Task1. Read the following information about microbiology and say if you agree with the definition.

Microbiology is study of bacteria, including their classification and the prevention of diseases that arise from bacterial infection. The subject matter of bacteriology is distributed not only among bacteriologists but also among chemists, biochemists, geneticists, pathologists, immunologists, and public-health physicians.

Task2. Read and translate the text.

The 17th-century discovery that some living forms were invisible to the naked eye was a dramatic one in man's history. The word microbe was coined in the latter quarter of the 19th century to describe these organisms, all of which were thought to be related. As microbiology eventually developed into a separate science, it was found that microbes comprise a very large group of extremely diverse organisms; thus, microbiology became subdivided into various disciplines: bacteriology, protozoology, and virology. The diversity of microbes, or microorganisms as they are now commonly called, has meant that it is almost impossible for one person to be knowledgeable in all of the disciplines grouped under microbiology.

Microbiology involves the identification of microorganisms and the study of their structure and function. It encompasses the study of bacteria, rickettsiae, small fungi (yeasts and moulds), algae, and protozoans, as well as problematical forms of life such as viruses. Because of the difficulty of assigning plant or animal status to microorganisms - some are plant-like, others animal-like - they are sometimes considered a separate group called protists. Microbes can also be divided into prokaryotes, which have a primitive and dispersed kind of nuclear material, the blue-green algae, bacteria, and rickettsiae - and eukaryotes, which display a distinct nucleus bounded by a membrane. Such are small algae other than the blue-greens, yeasts and moulds, and protozoans. (All higher organisms are eukaryotes.)

Microorganisms are of incalculable value in nature, causing the disintegration of animal and plant remains and converting them to gases and minerals that can be recycled in other organisms. Microorganisms are no longer the exclusive concern of microbiologists. Biochemists, geneticists, cytologists, and molecular biologists have discovered the value of microbes as experimental tools in the study of such fundamental biological processes as metabolism, photosynthesis, enzyme action, gene action, and population dynamics. Microorganisms are well suited to such uses; they represent a vast range of metabolic types, and genetic changes are correlated with their rapid proliferation. In addition, they can subsist on relatively simple inorganic nutrients and, because they multiply rapidly, are available in extremely large numbers in a relatively short period of time. They are also relatively easy to maintain and handle under laboratory conditions.

Microbiology can be subdivided into theoretical, or pure, microbiology, and practical, or applied, microbiology. The latter can be further subdivided according to specialties, such as medical, industrial, agricultural, food, and dairy microbiology.

Task3. Answer the following questions.

1. When was the word “microbe” coined?

2. Why did microbiology become subdivided into separate disciplines?

3. Is it possible for one person to be knowledgeable in all of the disciplines grouped under microbiology?

4. What are the main functions of microbiology?

5. What is the difference between protests, prokaryotes, eukaryotes?

6. Why are microorganisms of incalculable value in nature?

7. Why are microorganisms no longer the exclusive concern of microbiologists?

8. What is the difference between theoretical and applied microbiology?

Task4. Agree or disagree with the statements.

1. The word microbe was coined in the latter quarter of the 18th century.

2. It was found that microbes comprise a very large group of extremely diverse organisms?

3. Microbiology involves only the identification of microorganisms.

4. Eukaryotes display a distinct nucleus bounded by a membrane.

5. Microorganisms are well suited to experimental uses.

6. Microorganisms are relatively difficult to maintain and handle under laboratory conditions.

Task5. Prove that microbiology is a very broad subject involving studies of different disciplines.

Task6. Read the text and speak about different views on the origin of micro-organisms.

Top of Form 1

Microbiology can be said to have begun with the development of the microscope. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch draper, was the first to provide proper descriptions of his observations, "animalcules," as he called them.

The early Greeks believed that living things could originate from nonliving matter; the goddess Gea was credited with creating life from stones. Although Aristotle discarded this notion, he still held that animals could arise spontaneously from other unlike organisms or from soil. His influence regarding this concept of spontaneous generation was still felt as late as the 17th century. Toward the end of the 17th century, a chain of observations, experiments, and arguments began that dealt a deathblow to the idea that life could be generated from nonlife.

Although Francesco Redi, an Italian naturalist, disproved that higher forms of life could originate spontaneously, proponents of the concept claimed that microbes were different and did indeed arise in this way. Such illustrious names as John Needham, Lazzaro Spallanzani, Franz Schultze, and Theodor Schwann figured in the debates.

It remained for Louis Pasteur to settle the matter. He proved in a series of masterful experiments that only pre-existing microbes could give rise to other microbes--at least under current earthly conditions (that life arose spontaneously from nonlife at some earlier time, under appropriate physical and chemical conditions, is an undisputed postulate of chemical evolution).

Regarding microbes and disease, Girolamo Fracastoro, an Italian scholar, advanced the notion as early as the mid-1500s that contagion is an infection that passes from one thing to another. The "thing" that is passed along eluded discovery until the late 1800s, when the work of many scientists, Pasteur foremost among them, determined the role of bacteria in fermentation and disease. Robert Koch, a German physician, defined the procedure for proving that a specific organism causes a specific disease.

The foundation of microbiology was securely laid during the period from about 1880 to 1900. The students of Pasteur, Koch, and others discovered in rapid succession a host of bacteria capable of causing specific diseases (pathogens) and elaborated an extensive armamentarium of techniques and laboratory procedures for revealing the ubiquity, diversity, and power of microbes.

All of these developments occurred in Europe. Not until the early 1900s did microbiology become established in America. Many of the microbiologists who worked in America at this time either had studied under Koch or at the Pasteur Institute, in Paris. All microbiologists of the early 20th century, however, were influenced by such men as Koch. Once established in America, microbiology flourished, especially with regard to such related disciplines as biochemistry and genetics. Since the 1940s, microbiology has experienced an extremely productive period, during which many disease-causing microbes have been identified and methods to control them have been developed.