Microbiology

Course Description

Microbiology covers microbial morphology, physiology and taxonomy; relationships of microorganisms to total environment.

Within the SCNS taxonomy, MCB is the Microbiology prefix. The University of West Florida publishes this at 3 semester hours through the Department of Biology, College of Science and Engineering.

⚠ This course is not in the statewide priority inventory and had no guide until now; it is written because it disposes of the queued MCB3020C, which UWF does not publish, and because its laboratory MCB3020L is queued and binds to it.

⚠⚠ UWF's description of this course is two clauses long, and it understates what the course is. The prerequisite structure tells you far more: general chemistry with its laboratory, plus a full year of majors biology or of anatomy and physiology. This is the upper-division majors microbiology course, and it is the only route in the prefix that opens MCB4203.

Because the published description is minimal, the outcomes and topics below are the standard content of an upper-division majors microbiology course rather than a transcription of a published list. The instructor's syllabus governs.

⚠ The phrase "relationships of microorganisms to total environment" is doing real work, though. It signals that this is not a purely medical course — environmental, industrial and ecological microbiology belong here in a way they do not in the health sciences route. Nitrogen fixation, biogeochemical cycling, biofilms, extremophiles and bioremediation are as much a part of the subject as pathogens.

That breadth is the honest case for microbiology as a discipline. Microbes run the planet's elemental cycles, and human disease is a small and recent corner of what they do.

⚠ Why this guide exists under this number

Many Florida institutions carry this material as a single integrated C course. UWF runs a separate lecture and laboratory, each with its own SCNS number, and this guide documents the UWF lecture. Its laboratory partner, where UWF publishes one, is documented separately in this repository. ⚠ SCNS equivalency does not cross numbers, so transfer between the integrated and split forms is evaluated by hand — carry a syllabus in either direction.

⚠ The contact-hour figure is derived — the University of West Florida publishes none

UWF's catalog publishes a credit value in semester hours, the college and department, prerequisites and co-requisites, and fee notices. It does not publish contact hours, a lecture and laboratory split, or terms of offering for any course. Every contact-hour value in a UWF guide in this repository is derived. The figure applies the standard lecture convention of 15 contact hours per credit, giving 45 hours for 3 semester hours. Confirm the meeting schedule with the department.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Describe the history and scope of microbiology as a discipline.
• Describe prokaryotic cell structure in detail including the envelope.
• Compare bacterial and archaeal cell architecture.
• Describe microbial taxonomy and modern approaches to classification.
• Describe phylogenetic classification based on molecular data.
• Describe microbial growth kinetics and the growth curve.
• Describe the physical and chemical requirements for microbial growth.
• Describe methods of measuring microbial growth.
• Describe microbial nutrition and nutritional classification.
• Describe chemoheterotrophic metabolism including fermentation and respiration.
• Describe chemolithotrophy and phototrophy.
• Describe the diversity of microbial metabolic strategies.
• Describe microbial genetics, mutation, and DNA repair.
• Describe horizontal gene transfer and its evolutionary significance.
• Describe the regulation of gene expression in prokaryotes.
• Describe viruses, bacteriophages, and viral replication strategies.
• Describe the major bacterial and archaeal groups.
• Describe the eukaryotic microorganisms including fungi and protozoa.
• Describe microbial ecology and microbial roles in element cycling.
• Describe biofilms and their formation and significance.
• Describe symbioses between microorganisms and other organisms.
• Describe applied and industrial microbiology including bioremediation.
• Describe host-microbe interaction and the basis of pathogenicity.
• Describe antimicrobial agents, resistance, and its evolutionary basis.

Optional Outcomes

• Relate course content to a current Florida public health problem.
• Describe antimicrobial resistance as a clinical and public health problem.
• Read and interpret a primary research paper or outbreak report.
• Describe how the material supports graduate or professional study.
• Seek undergraduate research or laboratory experience in the field.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• History and scope of microbiology
• Prokaryotic cell structure and the envelope
• Bacteria and archaea compared
• Microbial taxonomy
• Molecular phylogenetic classification
• Growth kinetics and the growth curve
• Requirements for growth
• Measuring growth
• Microbial nutrition and nutritional classes
• Fermentation and respiration
• Chemolithotrophy and phototrophy
• Metabolic diversity
• Microbial genetics and mutation
• Horizontal gene transfer
• Regulation of gene expression
• Viruses and bacteriophages
• Bacterial and archaeal diversity
• Fungi and protozoa
• Microbial ecology and element cycling
• Biofilms
• Microbial symbioses
• Applied and industrial microbiology
• Host-microbe interaction and pathogenicity
• Antimicrobials and resistance

Optional Topics

• Florida public health applications
• Antimicrobial resistance
• Primary literature and outbreak reports
• Graduate and professional preparation
• Undergraduate research and laboratory experience

Resources & Tools

• A majors microbiology text — Madigan's Brock Biology of Microorganisms is the standard for this level and is genuinely different in depth from the allied health texts; Willey's Prescott's Microbiology is the common alternative.
• ⚠ Do not substitute an allied health text here. Tortora and Bauman are good books for a different course; they do not carry the metabolic and ecological depth this one assumes.
• Small Things Considered (the ASM blog) — free; short, well-written pieces on current microbiology, and unusually good at conveying why the field is interesting.
• NCBI, BLAST and the 16S rRNA databases (SILVA, RDP) — free; molecular taxonomy is done this way, and doing it once makes the classification material concrete.
• MicrobeWiki (Kenyon College) — free; student-built organism pages, useful as a model for the kind of write-up this course often assigns.
• The Journal of Bacteriology and Applied and Environmental Microbiology — through the UWF library; where the primary literature of this course lives.
• CDC (cdc.gov) — free; disease pages, treatment guidance, and the MMWR, which is where outbreak investigations are actually published.
• Florida Department of Health (floridahealth.gov) — free; state and county reportable disease data, and the surveillance reports that make this material local.
• A UWF librarian — included in enrolment; an hour on database searching pays for itself across a whole degree.

Career Pathways

• Medical and clinical laboratory technologist (SOC 29-2011) and technician (SOC 29-2012) — ⚠ Florida licenses clinical laboratory personnel through the Department of Health, and licensure requires an approved programme, not merely coursework. Microbiology is one of the core disciplines of the field.
• Microbiologist (SOC 19-1022) — public health laboratories, environmental laboratories, water utilities, food safety, and pharmaceutical and biotechnology quality control.
• Epidemiologist (SOC 19-1041) — generally requires a graduate degree; the Florida Department of Health and county health departments are the principal state employers.
• Infection preventionist — hospital-based, commonly entered from nursing or medical laboratory science, with CBIC certification. Florida's large hospital systems — AdventHealth, Orlando Health, BayCare, Baptist, Ascension Sacred Heart in Pensacola — all employ them.
• Registered nurse (SOC 29-1141) — microbiology is a prerequisite for essentially every Florida nursing programme, which is why this prefix carries so much enrolment.
• Public health analyst and disease intervention specialist — county health departments across Florida; the state's climate, density, travel volume and mosquito burden make it a genuinely active infectious disease environment.
• Food safety and environmental health inspector — Florida's hospitality and agriculture sectors are large, and both are regulated on microbiological grounds.
• Water quality and environmental microbiology — utilities, springs and estuarine monitoring, and harmful algal bloom response, all substantial in this state.
• Preparation for medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, physician assistant and pharmacy — microbiology is prerequisite or strongly expected for all of them.

Special Information

⚠⚠⚠ UWF runs THREE separate microbiology routes — make sure you are in the right one

This is the single most important thing to understand about the MCB prefix, and no course title says it. UWF publishes three parallel microbiology sequences, in two different colleges and three different departments, aimed at three different audiences. They are not interchangeable, and enrolling in the wrong one wastes a term.

• ⚠⚠ Only the 3020 route is upper-division and only it opens the rest of the prefix. MCB4203 Microbes & Disease requires MCB3020 and accepts neither of the others. A biology major who takes the health sciences course has not met the requirement.
• ⚠ The prerequisites tell you the level far better than the titles do. MCB3020 requires general chemistry with its laboratory plus a full year of biology or anatomy and physiology; MCB2010 and MCB2010L publish no prerequisites at all. That gap is the real difference between the routes.
• If you are pre-nursing, check which one your programme names. UWF built MCB1000 for the BSN prerequisite explicitly, but nursing programmes at other Florida institutions frequently name MCB2010C instead, and requirements change between catalog years. Ask your advisor and get the answer against your own catalog year.
• ⚠⚠ Transferring in or out, this is where credit goes wrong. All three carry the word "Microbiology," and a transfer evaluator reading titles rather than descriptions can accept a course that does not satisfy the requirement. Carry a syllabus.
• Most Florida institutions run only one or two of these routes, commonly the integrated MCB2010C. UWF running all three is unusual and is what makes the choice a real one here.

⚠⚠ MCB3020 and MCB3020L bind each other — using two different notations

• The lecture lists the laboratory as an asterisked prerequisite: MCB 3020L*, meaning prior to or during the same term.
• The laboratory lists the lecture in an explicit Co-requisite field: Co-requisite: MCB 3020, which is conventionally the stricter same-term form.
• ⚠ So the pair is bound in both directions, but the two halves are marked differently. Every other reciprocal pair found in this catalog uses the same notation on both sides. The practical effect is the same — take them together — and this guide records the asymmetry rather than smoothing it over.
• Do not plan on splitting them across terms. Whichever notation governs, the registration system is what enforces it, and the safe assumption is that both are needed at once.

⚠⚠ The asterisk in a UWF prerequisite means the course may be taken at the same term

• UWF marks a concurrent course with an asterisk, defined on the catalog's Course Information page as: "This course may be taken prior to or during the same term."
• ⚠ A prerequisite written WITHOUT an asterisk must be completed first; one written WITH an asterisk may be taken in the same term. Reading an asterisked prerequisite as sequential adds a term for no reason.
• UWF also uses an explicit Co-requisite: field, the stricter form — conventionally the same term rather than prior-or-same. Both notations appear in this prefix, and in one case on opposite halves of the same pair.
• The /L notation in a prerequisite — CHM 2046/L, BSC 2011/L — means the course together with its laboratory.
• Confirm with an advisor; the registration system, not the catalog text, is what enforces it.

Course format and position in the curriculum

• Lecture with examinations.
• ⚠ No "permission is required" marking appears anywhere in the MCB prefix — enrolment is gated by prerequisites rather than by cohort admission. That is not true of the clinical programmes these courses feed into, which admit by cohort.
• UWF publishes no contact hours, lecture and laboratory split, or terms of offering for any course. Confirm the offering pattern with the department — and note that a course offered in one term only will delay a sequence by a full year if missed.

How Florida course levels affect transfer

In the Florida Statewide Course Numbering System the first digit is the level: 1 and 2 are lower division, 3 and 4 upper division, 5 and above graduate. ⚠ A lower-division course generally cannot satisfy an upper-division requirement, which matters in this prefix more than most — MCB1000, MCB2010 and MCB3020 all teach microbiology, and only MCB3020 is upper division. SCNS equivalency runs on the number and the content, so a course transfers as what it is, not as what its title resembles.

MCB3020 is 3 semester hours at the University of West Florida, through the Department of Biology, College of Science and Engineering.