Deck 1: Microbial Life: Origin and Discovery

Question 1

The use of agar as the gelling agent in solid media was suggested by:

A) Robert Koch
B) Ignaz Semmelweis
C) Angelina Hesse
D) Louis Pasteur
E) Richard Petri

Answer 1

C

Question 2

The first person to visualize individual microbes was:

A) Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
B) Robert Hooke
C) Louis Pasteur
D) Lady Montagu
E) Edward Jenner

Answer 2

A

Question 3

The presence of __________ on Mars today would increase the chance that microbial life exists there.

A) liquid water
B) oxygen
C) nitrogen gas
D) ammonia
E) DNA

Answer 3

A

Question 4

How is most sterilization performed for the controlled study of microbes?

A) boiling
B) pasteurization
C) filter sterilization
D) autoclaving
E) irradiation

Question 5

What type of gas do cyanobacteria produce for planet Earth?

A) oxygen
B) hydrogen
C) nitrogen
D) carbon dioxide
E) water vapor

Question 6

Robert Koch's greatest accomplishment in the field of medical bacteriology was with:

A) Escherichia coli
B) Bacillus subtilis
C) Mycobacterium tuberculosis
D) rabies
E) smallpox

Question 7

Which technique was developed to distinguish bacteria from human cells?

A) Gram stain
B) electron microscopy
C) X-ray diffraction
D) DNA sequencing
E) PCR

Question 8

What are the primary producers of major food webs?

A) plants
B) microbes
C) animals
D) fungi
E) viruses

Question 9

Which century is known as the golden age of microbiology?

A) the seventeenth
B) the eighteenth
C) the nineteenth
D) the twentieth
E) the twenty-first

Question 10

The first genomes to be sequenced were those of:

A) humans
B) bacteria
C) viruses
D) prions
E) fungi

Question 11

A human body contains __________ times as many microbes as it does human cells.

A) 2
B) 5
C) 10
D) 50
E) 100

Question 12

Who developed the concept of medical statistics?

A) Francis Crick
B) Florence Nightingale
C) Edward Jenner
D) Louis Pasteur
E) Alexander Fleming

Question 13

Bacteria that produce enzymes used in the polymerase chain reaction were isolated from:

A) lake water
B) ocean
C) soil
D) intestines
E) hot springs

Question 14

What percentage of microbes in our biosphere can be cultured in the laboratory?

A) less than 1%
B) approximately 10%
C) approximately 25%
D) approximately 50%
E) more than 90%

Question 15

The eukaryotic predators of the microscopic world are:

A) viruses
B) bacteria
C) algae
D) cyanobacteria
E) protists

Question 16

How did European invaders to North America kill much of the native population?

A) tuberculosis
B) leprosy
C) smallpox
D) HIV
E) bubonic plague

Question 17

All of the following have been found in mummies and tomb art EXCEPT:

A) tuberculosis
B) polio
C) leprosy
D) smallpox
E) prions

Question 18

Suppose Pasteur's swan-necked flasks containing boiled broth became cloudy 24 hours after boiling. Which choice could best explain the turbidity or cloudiness in the broth without supporting spontaneous generation?

A) Endospores in the broth survived boiling and grew after the broth cooled.
B) Contaminating organisms in the broth killed by boiling became alive again after the broth cooled.
C) Chemicals in the broth came together to form living organisms.
D) The broth allowed light to pass through it with less interference after boiling.
E) Solid material in the broth dissolved during boiling.

Question 19

Which of these is currently the number one cause of human mortality?

A) cardiovascular disease
B) cancer
C) accidents
D) microbial disease
E) strokes

Question 20

Which of these groups are considered to be microbes but NOT considered to be cells?

A) viruses
B) bacteria
C) archaea
D) protists
E) prions

Question 21

Which microbes may resemble those of the earliest life forms?

A) archaea
B) photosynthetic microbes
C) viruses
D) cyanobacteria
E) protists

Question 22

What is the basis for the modern smallpox vaccine?

A) chickenpox virus
B) cowpox virus
C) rabies virus
D) smallpox virus
E) anthrax

Question 23

It took the advent of the PCR to detect the presence of the causative agent for which disease?

A) anthrax
B) tuberculosis
C) AIDS
D) rabies
E) smallpox

Question 24

Which types of compounds have a strong tendency to accept electrons?

A) oxidized
B) reduced
C) neutral
D) protons
E) neutrons

Question 25

The environment of early Earth may have contained all EXCEPT:

A) ferrous iron
B) methane
C) ammonia
D) oxygen
E) hydrogen gas

Question 26

Early metabolism may have been catalyzed by:

A) DNA
B) RNA
C) protein
D) amino acids
E) carbohydrates

Question 27

The genetic expression machinery of archaea is most similar to:

A) monera
B) prokaryotes
C) bacteria
D) eukaryotes
E) mitochondria

Question 28

How did Sergei Winogradsky grow lithotrophs?

A) enrichment culture
B) aseptic technique
C) pure culture
D) endosymbiosis
E) chain of infection

Question 29

You have isolated a bacterium that you believe to be the causative agent of a new disease in frogs. How would you test the third of Koch's postulates?

A) Determine the shape of the bacterial cells.
B) Inject the bacteria into a healthy frog.
C) Isolate the bacterium from a sick frog.
D) Show that the bacterium is NOT present in healthy frogs.
E) Grow a pure culture of the bacterium outside the frog.

Question 30

The word "vaccination" is derived from the Latin word vacca, which means:

A) inject
B) smallpox
C) immunize
D) cow
E) pustule

Question 31

Which group of microorganisms includes many that grow in extreme environments?

A) algae
B) bacteria
C) protists
D) archaea
E) fungi

Question 32

Which of the following does NOT contain DNA or RNA?

A) prokaryote
B) eukaryote
C) virus
D) viroid
E) prion

Question 33

Which of the following can safely be ingested to fight bacterial infections?

A) antiseptics
B) disinfectants
C) phenol
D) chlorine
E) antibiotics

Question 34

In the three-domain model, the bacterial ancestor of mitochondria derives from ancient:

A) fungi
B) cyanobacteria
C) proteobacteria
D) archaea
E) protists

Question 35

Penicillin was first used to save the lives of many people during which war?

A) Civil War
B) Korean War
C) Vietnam War
D) World War I
E) World War II

Question 36

All of the following are true about penicillin EXCEPT:

A) It was discovered by Alexander Fleming.
B) It was an accidental discovery.
C) It is produced by a bacterium.
D) It was the first antibiotic used by humans.
E) It was purified by Florey and Chain.

Question 37

In the three-domain model, the bacterial ancestor of chloroplasts derives from ancient:

A) fungi
B) cyanobacteria
C) proteobacteria
D) archaea
E) protists

Question 38

Which of the following organelles are thought to be of prokaryotic origin?

A) chloroplast
B) mitochondria
C) nucleus
D) chloroplast and mitochondria
E) chloroplast and nucleus

Question 39

The development of the theory of the "RNA world" resulted from the discovery of:

A) archaea
B) prions
C) bacteria
D) ribozymes
E) endosymbionts

Question 40

Organisms which live symbiotically inside a larger organism are known as:

A) organelles
B) cyanobacteria
C) mitochondria
D) endosymbionts
E) chloroplasts

Question 41

Why did it take so long for humans to determine that microbes cause infectious diseases?

Question 42

What type of analysis was used to discover the overall structure of the DNA double helix?

A) microscopy
B) X-ray diffraction
C) Polymerase chain reaction
D) DNA sequencing
E) recombinant DNA

Question 43

The X-ray diffraction studies by which of the following scientists concluded that DNA was a double helix?

A) James Watson
B) Rosalind Franklin
C) Francis Crick
D) Maurice Wilkins
E) Kary Mullis

Question 44

What is used to focus the beam of electrons in an electron microscope?

A) electromagnets
B) condenser lens
C) light rays
D) X-ray diffraction
E) glass

Question 45

Define attenuation and describe some mechanisms used to attenuate pathogens.

Question 46

Describe the discoveries of Louis Pasteur while working with the French beer and wine manufacturers.

Question 47

Carl Woese's discovery replaced the classification scheme of five kingdoms with a scheme of three:

A) phyla
B) domains
C) classes
D) orders
E) genera

Question 48

What is the significance of the work of Ignaz Semmelweis and Joseph Lister?

Question 49

What was the major complaint about Lazzaro Spallanzani's experiment to disprove spontaneous generation, and how did Louis Pasteur's swan-neck flasks overcome this?

Question 50

The study of and cause of disease in humans, animals, and plants is called:

A) microbiology
B) phylogeny
C) genomics
D) epidemiology
E) forensics

Question 51

The analysis of microbial strains as evidence in criminal investigations is known as:

A) forensic microbiology
B) recombinant DNA
C) comparative genomics
D) classification
E) gene regulation

Question 52

The Asilomar Conference was held to regulate and restrict the field of:

A) recombinant DNA
B) comparative genomics
C) DNA sequencing
D) DNA amplification
E) forensic microbiology

Question 53

Which scientist first discovered the process of transformation?

A) Francis Crick
B) Robert Koch
C) Edward Jenner
D) Louis Pasteur
E) Frederick Griffith

Question 54

Taq polymerase formed the basis of a multibillion-dollar industry of:

A) comparative genomics
B) recombinant DNA
C) X-ray diffraction
D) DNA amplification
E) DNA sequencing

Question 55

How are prokaryotes and eukaryotes different?

Question 56

How are microbes classified today?

A) comparative genomics
B) microscopy
C) X-ray diffraction
D) DNA sequencing
E) rRNA sequencing

Question 57

Antoni van Leeuwenhoek worked as a cloth draper, inspecting the quality of cloth. How did this lead to his interest in microscopy?

Question 58

How would you use Robert Koch's postulates to prove that a specific organism causes a new disease in mice?

Question 59

What is the most recent evidence suggesting that all life on Earth shares a common ancestry?

Question 60

Robert Koch's postulates have not been used to prove HIV as the causative agent of AIDS. Why not?

Question 61

Is it true that only culturable bacteria contribute to ecology and pathology? Explain your answer.

Question 62

Define the term "endosymbiont" and give an example of an endosymbiotic relationship found in nature.

Question 63

Explain why the organisms that were studied by Sergei Winogradsky could not be grown on Robert Koch's plate media containing agar or gelatin.

Question 64

Briefly explain the endosymbiosis theory and the evidence that supports it.

Question 65

Give two reasons why microbes have been difficult to classify.

Question 66

Wilderness protection worldwide has been fueled by the need to find novel strains of antibiotic-producing bacteria and fungi.

Question 67

What were the contributions of Rosalind Franklin toward discovering the structure of DNA and why wasn't she one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize for this discovery?

Question 68

Briefly describe how the ultracentrifuge is used to determine the sizes of cellular macromolecules.