Bacteriology
&
Antibiotics

Sessions and Tracks

Track 01: Microbiology 

Microbiology is the study of all living organisms that are too small to be visible with the naked eye. This includes bacteria, archaea, viruses, fungi, prions, protozoa and algae, collectively known as 'microbes'. These microbes play key roles in nutrient cycling, biodegradation/biodeterioration, climate change, food spoilage, the cause and control of disease, and biotechnology. Microbes can be put to work in many ways: making life-saving drugs, the manufacture of biofuels, cleaning up pollution, and producing/processing food and drink.

Track 02: Food microbiology 

Food microbiology is the study of the microorganisms that inhabit, create, or contaminate food, including the study of microorganisms causing food spoilage, pathogens that may cause disease especially if food is improperly cooked or stored, those used to produce fermented foods such as cheese, yogurt, bread, beer, and wine, and those with other useful roles such as producing probiotics. Food safety is a major focus of food microbiology. Numerous agents of disease, pathogens, are readily transmitted via food, including bacteria, and viruses. Microbial toxins are also possible contaminants of food. However, microorganisms and their products can also be used to combat these pathogenic microbes. Probiotic bacteria, including those that produce bacteriocins, can kill and inhibit pathogens. Alternatively, purified bacteriocins such as nisin can be added directly to food products. Finally, bacteriophages, viruses that only infect bacteria, can be used to kill bacterial pathogens.

Track 03: Parasitic infection

Parasites are organisms that live off other organisms, or hosts, to survive. Some parasites don’t noticeably affect their hosts. Others grow, reproduce, or invade organ systems that make their hosts sick, resulting in a parasitic infection. Parasitic infections are a big problem in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. Malaria is one of the deadliest parasitic diseases. Some parasites like Toxoplasma gondii and Plasmodium spp. can cause disease directly, but other organisms can cause disease by the toxins that they produce.

 

Track 04: Virology

Virology is the scientific discipline concerned with the study of the biology of viruses and viral diseases, including the distribution, biochemistry, physiology, molecular biology, ecology, evolution and clinical aspects of viruses.

 

Track 05: Bacterial pathogenesis

Bacterial pathogenesis is the process by which bacteria infect and cause disease in a host. Not all bacteria are pathogens and have the ability for pathogenesis (also known as virulence). Pathogenic bacteria utilise a number of mechanisms to cause disease in human hosts. Bacterial pathogens express a wide range of molecules that bind host cell targets to facilitate a variety of different host responses. The molecular strategies used by bacteria to interact with the host can be unique to specific pathogens or conserved across several different species. A key to fighting bacterial disease is the identification and characterisation of all these different strategies. The availability of complete genome sequences for several bacterial pathogens coupled with bioinformatics will lead to significant advances toward this goal. There are several bacterial pathogenic diseases. One among them is tuberculosis which is caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It includes other pathogens of bacteria such as Streptococcus and Pseudomonas. These pathogens and form of bacteria causes many foodborne illnesses and infections such as tetanus, typhoid fever and diphtheria. Microbes express their pathogenicity by means of their virulence. The determinants of virulence of a pathogen are any of its genetic or biochemical or structural features that enable it to produce disease in a host. In bacterial host mediated pathogenesis, (e.g., tuberculosis), tissue damage results from the toxic mediators released by lymphoid cells rather than from bacterial toxins.