Prescott's Microbiology
10th Edition
ISBN: 9781259281594
Author: Joanne Willey, Linda Sherwood Adjunt Professor Lecturer, Christopher J. Woolverton Professor
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
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Chapter 4, Problem 5CHI
In the chapter opening case study, we focus on the production of methane by archaea living in the rumens of domesticated ruminant animals. However, there are many other sources of methane besides livestock. These include wild ruminants, the anoxic soils of rice paddies, and deforestation. There is considerable interest in more precisely measuring the output of methane by all these sources, yet current methods have many drawbacks. Some are laborious; some have a high degree of variability; others can only be used in highly controlled environments. In 2011 a group of scientists reported their attempts to correlate methane production with the amount of archaeol in the feces of cattle. They also determined archaeol levels resulting from different feeding regimens. Archaeol is a glycerol diether that can be measured by chemical procedures such as gas chromatography. What assumption did the scientists make when they chose to measure archaeol? Why did they choose to measure a glycerol diether rather than a diglycerol tetraether in their study? Suggest one other application of this method to better understand methane release into the atmosphere.
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Background info: The cyanobacterium Arthrospira platensis, colloquially known as Spirulina is/was a popular health food/supplement because it is extremely rich in amino acids and vitamins. However, these cyanobacteria also happen to be extremely good at absorbing lead, which means that these supplements are often contaminated with toxic amounts of heavy metals. One suggested application for these cyanobacteria is in bioremediation systems for industrial/mining wastewater contaminated with lead
Question: The way that this application would work is that you’d have a sealed concrete pond full of the cyanobacteria that wastewater would flow into and then as the wastewater flows out the other end of the pond, the cyanobacteria are removed. How would this work to remove lead from the water?
Methanopyrus kandleri and Pyrolobus fumarij are bacteria that live near hydrothermal vents under the oceans. Temperatures at these vents can reach well over 100 degrees Celsius.
Both organisms obtain energy from hydrogen but Methanopyrus kandleri grows best at 98 degrees Celsius while Pyrolobus fumarij prefers to reproduce at temperatures above 100 degrees Celsius. These bacteria provide the base of a food web at the bottom of the ocean floor.
What questions could a student ask in order to investigate this difference between the bacteria?
A.
What kind of heat tolerance do other nearby organisms have?
B.
Does the Methanopyrus kandleri live farther away from the vent than the Pyrolobus fumarij?
C.
Does Methanopyrus kandleri have a thicker cell wall than Pyrolobus fumarij?
D.
Is one organism better adapted to the environment than the other?
The unicellular cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus sp. is the most abundant photosynthetic microbe in tropical and subtropical oceans. At least two ecotypes exist: one is adapted to high light and the other to lower light intensities. How does the presence of these two ecotypes contribute to their physiological success and their numerical success? How would you determine the amount of fixed carbon they contribute to these open-ocean ecosystems?
Chapter 4 Solutions
Prescott's Microbiology
Ch. 4.1 - Retrieve, Infer, Apply 1. Which cell shapes are...Ch. 4.1 - Retrieve, Infer, Apply 2. Archaea was first...Ch. 4.2 - MICRO INQUIRY How is pseudomurein similar to...Ch. 4.2 - Retrieve, Infer, Apply 1. Identify three features...Ch. 4.2 - Retrieve, Infer, Apply 2. Both bacteria and...Ch. 4.3 - Thus far, homologues of intermediate filaments...Ch. 4.3 - Retrieve, Infer, Apply 2. Archaea are often...Ch. 4.4 - Prob. 1RIACh. 4.4 - Retrieve, Infer, Apply 2. What observations about...Ch. 4.4 - Retrieve, Infer, Apply 3. List three aspects of...
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