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01 Schaechter.Qxp EDITORIAL INTERNATIONAL MICROBIOLOGY (2007) 10:153-156 DOI: 10.2436/20.1501.01.22 ISSN: 1139-6709 www.im.microbios.org The road from The Microbial world to Microbe Moselio Schaechter,1 John L. Ingraham,2 Frederick C. Neidhardt3 1San Diego State University and University of California-San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA. 2University of California-Davis, Davis, CA, USA. 3University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA The year 2007 commemorates the 50th anniversary of the genetics, immunology, and infectious diseases. Stanier publication of The Microbial World, the seminal microbiolo- would do all the rest and, of course, he would lead, direct, gy textbook that shattered the microbiology world and whose oversee, synthesize, orchestrate, and criticize. Ricardo first edition was coauthored by Roger Y. Stanier, Michael Guerrero, current SEM president and young postdoctoral fel- Doudoroff and Edward A. Adelberg. The year 2007 marks low in Ingraham laboratory in the years 1972-1973, was pay- also twenty-five years of Stanier’s passing away. The ing him a visit during the summer of 1974 and surely recalls Spanish Society for Microbiology (SEM) with the support of Ingraham’s excitement after receiving Stanier’s letter. Fundación Ramón Areces The three authors of has organized a Sympo- the coming edition met sium, in the frame of the the next summer at 21st national congress of Ingraham’s house in the SEM (Seville, 17-20 Davis at Stanier’s insis- September 2007), to com- tence to put the book memorate those anniver- together. Stanier was saries, and has invited us committed to presenta- (Schaechter, Ingraham and tion almost as deeply as Neidhardt) to contribute he was to science. The to this celebration. book had to sound right as well as be right. Writing The Micro- Stanier’s sound test was bial World. One of us to read the other author’s (Ingraham) was coauthor offerings aloud, pausing of The Microbial World frequently to comment from its fourth edition. In and suggest rewriting. the summer of 1974 he Ingraham recalls his received a life-changing pausing while reading letter from Stanier asking something he had written to join him and Edward Adelberg in writing the next edition about the chemostat, horrified that Ingraham had called it a of the book. He would replace, if such were possible, device. “Device sounds so sinister.” Marjorie—Ingraham’s Michael Doudoroff, one of the original authors and a brilliant wife—fed them, typed the complete manuscript with three carbon scientist, in doing the parts on physiology, biochemistry, and copies, and proofread it. She also sewed the cuffs on Roger’s new applications. Adelberg would continue his stewardship of trousers. She had the toughest job and busiest summer of all. 154 INT. MICROBIOL. Vol. 10, 2007 SCHAECHTER ET AL. At Stanier’s request, Ingraham went on to lead the writ- well in assimilating the additions, corrections and amend- ing of the fifth edition without Staniers’s help, as by then he ments provided by later molecular studies. became quite ill, but with the valuable participation of Mark The Microbial World opened a trail that has led to the cur- L. Wheelis and Page R. Painter. The publishers, of course, rent introductory text Microbe, through two advanced books were anxious to do subsequent editions, but somehow it on bacterial physiology. Two of us (Ingraham and Neidhardt) never seemed quite right to Ingraham, who found himself along with Ole Maaløe worked on one of these books in the (during the preparation of the fifth edition) attempting to early 1980s trying to summarize our thinking about the write with Roger’s voice and hearing him read it aloud. He process of bacterial growth, our conception of the subject that decided that the book should appropriately end with Roger. was molded by what we had learned from The Microbial Stanier was a remarkably productive microbiologist. World. The product was Growth of the Bacterial Cell Certainly, his essay on what is a bacterium, and studies on (Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA, 1983). Our decision to metabolism of aromatic compounds, taxonomy of pseudo- focus on growth as a preeminent property of bacteria (and a monads and cyanobacteria are monuments of modern micro- central property of all living systems), was easily made, for it biology. But his proudest achievement, as he said, was writ- grew out of studies that had engaged the three authors for ing The Microbial World. He mentioned that often in his many years, in Davis, Copenhagen, Paris, West Lafayette, final days. He always said that his purpose for writing it was and Ann Arbor. to make microbiology a part of biology from which it had Three features of Growth of the Bacterial Cell distin- always been curiously isolated. The book certainly was a guished it from any other treatise on bacteria. One was the force in that movement, now accomplished—so fully attention it placed on the need, in quantitative bacterial accomplished that it is difficult to imagine that it was not growth studies, to establish reference conditions and to always so. achieve balanced growth, recognizing that these were essen- Stanier’s major aim in science was to present microbiol- tial for reproducibility of bacterial cultures. This subject was ogy as a logical, coherent science and The Microbial World given prominence by placing it as the book’s opening argu- was one of his major vehicles. His classic 1962 paper with ment. Today its message is heeded by a new generation of C.B. van Niel, “The concept of a bacterium” [4] reveals that students, who are coming recently into bacterial growth stud- passion, as do his intense investigations on taxonomy of ies from physics, engineering, and systems modeling. Pseudomonas and cyanobacteria. Of course, things changed Organizing metabolism into an all-embracing framework since those studies—the archaea were discovered, as were was a second feature—one that has become widely adopted. powerful new molecular methods to deduce microbial phy- Every metabolic reaction was placed into one of four logeny. Roger would have embraced them fully as he did ear- domains: fueling, biosynthesis, macromolecule synthesis, lier molecular methods such as DNA hybridization. and assembly. From estimates of the composition of an Inexplicably, some have concluded that Roger’s early Escherichia coli cell at a particular rate of balanced growth, attempts at finding structure and coherence in microbiology, the total consumption of carbon, ammonium, phosphate, ATP probably because they were clearly and convincingly pre- and reducing equivalents was calculated and tabulated for sented, were an impediment to the science’s progress [2]. Of each of the metabolic domains. This treatment of metabo- course, crisply defining questions and clearly stating posi- lism, with its material and energetic balances required for tions are always stimulants, never an impediment. This growth, and its concept of the 13 precursor metabolites, had Symposium shows that many of us continue to value been the inspiration of H. Edwin Umbarger, a giant in the Stanier’s clarifying contributions to microbiology. field of 20th century bacterial biochemistry. The third unique feature of Growth of the Bacterial Cell Origins of Growth of the Bacterial Cell and was the introduction of the concept of growth rate as a vari- Physiology of the Microbial Cell. One of us able in growth physiology. The chapter bearing this title (Neidhardt) was a graduate student at mid-twentieth century, (“Growth rate as a variable”) dealt with the striking extent to and was pleased and relieved when he opened a textbook that which one can, for a given temperature, predict the chemical finally showed him how his interest in bacterial growth fitted composition of the bacteria cell from its steady state growth into the larger scheme of the biological world. As another of rate. This concept still disturbs many investigators, who us (Ingraham) has said, The Microbial World clarified the object to calling the growth rate a “variable” rather than a notion of a bacterium, and placed microbial studies firmly dependent consequence of the nutritive richness of the medi- within the framework of biological thought, providing a um. In fact, the beauty of the concept lies in the vision that structure that served microbiologists and biology students the composition of the cell in any given medium is the cell’s THE MICROBIAL WORLD INT. MICROBIOL. Vol. 10, 2007 155 steady state solution to the integrative nutritive value of the more than what can be reasonably covered in lectures. The medium, and to a first approximation is independent of the result is that our book is about half the size of others (and precise chemical nature of the medium. It has been a close weighs less than half as much). In addition, trying to provide family. The same woman, Marjorie Ingraham (1923-2005), students with a book they could actually read, we strove for who mended Roger Stanier’s trousers 1975, also provided a discursive style, explaining to the reader why we thought support for Neidhardt’s wife, Germaine, and infant son Marc that a given topic was interesting and how it fits in a general Chipault, as work progressed on Growth of the Bacterial Cell scheme. We have been told that we succeeded, at least in part. at her home in Davis seven years later. However, students who mainly like to look up facts, especial- The novel elements of Growth of the Bacterial Cell were ly for the purpose of memorizing them, may find this book continued in its sequel Physiology of the Microbial Cell; a inadequate. Molecular Approach (Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA, We should share with you some details of our interac- 1990) written by the three of us.
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