Chapter 26 : Listening to What the “Bug” Tells You

Abstract:

The College of Agriculture at Cornell University was virtually cost-free to residents of New York State and so the author decided to go there. Although there were laboratories in zoology, botany, and geology (and the author took them all), the microbiology laboratories were "user friendly." Perhaps what was so exciting was the hands-on approach. Results were in real time and experiments could be performed, even when they were not part of the formal laboratory exercise. This was certainly not true in other areas. During Srb's course Euphrusi's early work with Drosophila and McClintock's work with corn were discussed. However, it was the Neurospora genetics of Beadle and Tatum-to which Euphrusi had contributed-and Euphrusi's work with yeast and the beginnings of Escherichia coli genetics or bacteriophage T4 that seemed more meaningful. Lectures by the late Wolfe Vishniac dealt with "funny bugs," an anachronism describing a collection of bacteria that were then far outside the mainstream-for example, methane, sulfur, and photosynthetic bacteria. The photosynthetic bacteria were particularly interesting to the author because he was amazed that nonsulfur purple bacteria could grow heterotrophically and photosynthetically or not, depending on the absence or presence of oxygen, switching metabolic modes based on levels of oxygen. To investigate the photosynthetic membranes of the purple nonsulfur bacteria, it was essential to develop a genetic system for Rhodobacter sphaeroides. Such a system could be applied to study the control of gene expression by oxygen and light.