Brock Biology of Microorganisms

Citation

Madigan, M. T., Bender, K. S., Buckley, D. H., Sattley, W. M., & Stahl, D. A. (2020). Brock Biology of Microorganisms (16th ed.). Pearson.

Chapter Summary

The book has 34 chapters in seven units and runs to about 1,120 pages. Pearson describes it as organized around six themes set out by the American Society for Microbiology's Conference on Undergraduate Education: evolution, cell structure and function, metabolic pathways, information flow and genetics, microbial systems, and the impact of microorganisms. The sixteenth edition gives each chapter a theme built around a recent discovery, and the publisher highlights the genomics and "omics" revolution and an expanded art program. The unit and chapter titles below are the publisher's.

Unit 1: The Foundations of Microbiology (Chapters 1–5)

The chapters are The Microbial World; Microbial Cell Structure and Function; Microbial Metabolism; Microbial Growth and Its Control; and Viruses and Their Multiplication. They lay out the cell, its metabolism, how microbes grow and are controlled, and the basic biology of viruses.

Unit 2: Molecular Biology and Genetics (Chapters 6–9)

Microbial Information Flow and Protein Processing; Microbial Regulatory Systems; Molecular Aspects of Microbial Growth; and Genetics of Bacteria and Archaea cover how genetic information is expressed and regulated, how it links to growth, and how it is exchanged.

Unit 3: Genomics, Synthetic Biology, and Evolution (Chapters 10–13)

Microbial Genomics and Other Omics; Viral Genomics and Diversity; Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology; and Microbial Evolution and Genome Dynamics extend the molecular units to whole genomes, applied biotechnology and evolution.

Unit 4: Microbial Diversity (Chapters 14–18)

Metabolic Diversity of Microorganisms; Ecological Diversity of Bacteria; Phylogenetic Diversity of Bacteria; Phylogenetic Diversity of Archaea; and Diversity of Microbial Eukarya survey the range of microbial life, first by what organisms do and then by their phylogeny.

Unit 5: Microbial Ecology and Environmental Microbiology (Chapters 19–23)

Taking the Measure of Microbial Systems; Microbial Ecosystems; Nutrient Cycles; Microbiology of the Built Environment; and Microbial Symbioses with Microbes, Plants, and Animals treat microbes in their environments, including human-made ones.

Unit 6: Microbe–Human Interactions and the Immune System (Chapters 24–28)

Microbial Symbioses with Humans; Microbial Infection and Pathogenesis; Innate Immunity: Broadly Specific Host Defenses; Adaptive Immunity: Highly Specific Host Defenses; and Immune Disorders and Antimicrobial Therapy introduce the medical side of the book through the relationship between microbes and the human host.

Unit 7: Infectious Diseases (Chapters 29–34)

Diagnosing Infectious Diseases; Epidemiology and Public Health; Person-to-Person Bacterial and Viral Diseases; Vectorborne and Soilborne Bacterial and Viral Diseases; Waterborne and Foodborne Bacterial and Viral Diseases; and Eukaryotic Pathogens: Fungi, Protozoa, and Helminths. Chapters 31–33 are organized by route of transmission and Chapter 34 by pathogen group, rather than by organ system.

Key Concepts

Units 1–3: Cells, molecules and genomes

• Microbial metabolism and growth: Chapters 3 and 4.
• Information flow and regulatory systems: Chapters 6 and 7.
• Genomics and other omics: Chapter 10; synthetic biology: Chapter 12.
• Microbial evolution and genome dynamics: Chapter 13.

Units 4–5: Diversity and ecology

• Metabolic and phylogenetic diversity: Chapters 14, 16 and 17 treat metabolism, bacteria and archaea.
• Nutrient cycles and microbial ecosystems: Chapters 20 and 21.
• Symbiosis: Chapters 23 and 24.

Units 6–7: Host, immunity and disease

• Pathogenesis, innate immunity and adaptive immunity: Chapters 25–27.
• Antimicrobial therapy: Chapter 28.
• Epidemiology and public health: Chapter 30.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A framework from an educational body. The six ASM themes give the book an explicit organizing logic, and the seven-unit structure separates foundations, molecular biology, genomics, diversity, ecology, host–microbe interactions and disease.
• Breadth beyond medicine. Five of the seven units (23 of 34 chapters) concern cells, genetics, diversity and ecology rather than disease, so the book leaves room for students whose interests are not clinical. Topics such as the built environment, nutrient cycles and synthetic biology are named in the table of contents.
• Current science as the entry point. Pearson says each chapter of the sixteenth edition is built around a recent discovery, and describes the book as taking students through the genomics and "omics" revolution.
• Visual emphasis. The publisher stresses an extensive art program and says this edition expands it, to present microbiology as a visual science.

Limitations

• Size. About 1,120 pages in 34 chapters is more than a single course can cover, so instructors and readers must choose units.
• Disease comes last. The infectious diseases appear only in Unit 7, after the immune system chapters, and are organized by route of transmission or pathogen group rather than by organ system; readers who want an organ-by-organ catalogue of diseases will find a different organization from some other courses.
• Molecular middle. Units 2 and 3 (Chapters 6–13) are devoted to molecular biology and genomics, so readers without a grounding in chemistry and cell biology will find the middle of the book the hardest.

Where It Fits in the Course

Brock is the general microbiology textbook in this course with the most weight on cell biology, genetics, diversity and ecology. Tortora, Case, Bair, Weber and Funke's Microbiology: An Introduction is a comprehensive beginning text with a clinical focus, organizes its disease chapters by body system and, according to its publisher, assumes no previous biology or chemistry, which makes it the closer fit for allied-health courses; Brock is the better fit when the course emphasizes diversity, ecology and molecular biology. The OpenStax Microbiology text is a free, openly licensed one-semester introduction that concentrates on microbes in human health. Money's Microbiology: A Very Short Introduction is a short survey of the microbial world with no prerequisites.

For deeper study, White, Drummond and Fuqua's The Physiology and Biochemistry of Prokaryotes treats how prokaryotic cells work, organized by physiological topic, and Henkin and Peters's Snyder and Champness Molecular Genetics of Bacteria is an advanced textbook on bacterial genetics. Both continue topics that Brock introduces in Units 2–3.

How to Use This Book

The book is meant for students who have completed introductory biology and general chemistry. A practical plan for a general microbiology course:

• Core: Unit 1 (Chapters 1–5) for the foundations, then Chapters 6 and 9 for information flow and bacterial genetics.
• Choose by emphasis: Unit 3 for a genomics focus, Units 4–5 for diversity and ecology, Units 6–7 for a medical focus.
• Support: Use each chapter's recent-discovery framing to see why the material matters, and revisit Chapter 3 before Unit 4, since the chapter on metabolic diversity builds on it.

For a medical or health-professions course, go from Unit 1 through Chapters 24–28 and then to the disease chapters in Unit 7. For a course on environmental microbiology, move from Unit 1 to Units 4 and 5 and read Chapter 10 on omics alongside them.