Microbes and Disease

Course Description

Microbes & Disease enables the student to identify and use concepts, principles and theories that constitute the core discipline of human pathogenic microbiology. UWF states the focus will be on microbes and their pathogenic mechanisms, rather than the host immune response, with topics including cellular morphology and structure, physiology, ecology, and taxonomy of model microbial etiological agents as well as virulence factors that make them human pathogens.

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 MCB4203C, which UWF does not publish. UWF publishes no laboratory for this course at all — the queued C row cannot be matched to a UWF integrated course, and this lecture is what UWF actually offers.

⚠⚠ Note what UWF deliberately excludes: the host immune response. That is an unusual and useful piece of scoping. Most pathogenic microbiology courses split their attention between what the microbe does and what the host does back; this one commits to the microbe's side. If you want the immunological half, PCB4233 Immunology is where UWF teaches it.

The organising idea is the virulence factor. What makes one E. coli a harmless gut commensal and another one lethal is not the species — it is a set of acquired genes encoding adhesins, toxins, secretion systems and immune evasion machinery. Learning pathogenesis as gene-encoded capability rather than as a list of diseases is what makes this course cohere.

⚠ Only MCB3020 opens this course. Neither MCB1000 nor MCB2010 satisfies the prerequisite — see the routes table above, and plan the sequence early if this course is in your degree.

⚠ 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 core concepts and principles of pathogenic microbiology.
• Describe the relationship between commensalism, colonisation, and disease.
• Describe the stages of the infectious disease process.
• Describe portals of entry, adherence, and colonisation mechanisms.
• Describe adhesins, pili, and other attachment structures.
• Describe invasion mechanisms and intracellular survival strategies.
• Describe bacterial secretion systems and their roles in virulence.
• Describe exotoxins and their mechanisms of action.
• Describe endotoxin and the consequences of its release.
• Describe mechanisms of immune evasion used by pathogens.
• Describe the genetic basis of virulence and pathogenicity islands.
• Explain how horizontal gene transfer creates new pathogens.
• Describe the morphology, physiology, and taxonomy of model pathogens.
• Describe the ecology and reservoirs of major human pathogens.
• Describe zoonotic and vector-borne transmission.
• Describe major Gram-positive bacterial pathogens and their virulence factors.
• Describe major Gram-negative bacterial pathogens and their virulence factors.
• Describe intracellular and atypical bacterial pathogens.
• Describe fungal, protozoan, and helminth pathogens in outline.
• Describe viral pathogenesis mechanisms.
• Describe antimicrobial resistance mechanisms and their spread.
• Describe the laboratory diagnosis of bacterial infection.
• Apply Koch's postulates and their modern molecular reformulation.
• Evaluate evidence linking a microbe to a disease.

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

• Core concepts of pathogenic microbiology
• Commensalism, colonisation, disease
• Stages of the infectious process
• Portals of entry and adherence
• Adhesins and attachment structures
• Invasion and intracellular survival
• Bacterial secretion systems
• Exotoxins and their mechanisms
• Endotoxin
• Immune evasion mechanisms
• Genetic basis of virulence and pathogenicity islands
• Horizontal gene transfer and emergence
• Model pathogens: morphology, physiology, taxonomy
• Pathogen ecology and reservoirs
• Zoonoses and vector-borne transmission
• Gram-positive pathogens
• Gram-negative pathogens
• Intracellular and atypical pathogens
• Fungal, protozoan, and helminth pathogens
• Viral pathogenesis
• Antimicrobial resistance and its spread
• Laboratory diagnosis
• Koch's postulates and molecular reformulation
• Evaluating microbe-disease causation

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 pathogenic microbiology text — Ryan's Sherris Medical Microbiology and Murray's Medical Microbiology are the standards; Wilson's Bacterial Pathogenesis is the one organised around mechanism the way this course is.
• NCBI Bookshelf — free; carries Baron's Medical Microbiology, which is dated but sound on the classical pathogenesis material.
• CDC disease pages and MMWR — free; current outbreak investigations are the best available demonstration of pathogenesis reasoning applied under pressure.
• Virulence Factor Database (VFDB) — free; a catalogue of virulence factors by organism, aligned directly to how this course is organised.
• CDC Antibiotic Resistance Threats report — free; the current priority organisms and why they are prioritised.
• Florida Department of Health surveillance reports — free; Florida carries pathogens much of the country does not routinely see — Vibrio vulnificus in warm coastal water, arboviruses, and travel-associated importations through its major airports.
• PubMed — free; an upper-division course taught alongside a graduate section expects primary literature.
• 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.

⚠ UWF publishes no laboratory for this course

• Unlike MCB1000, MCB2010 and MCB3020, this course has no paired L at UWF, and no integrated C form either.
• ⚠ Other Florida institutions do run an integrated MCB4203C, which means a transfer in either direction is not a like-for-like match — the UWF course is lecture only. Carry a syllabus and expect the evaluation to be done by hand.
• If you want laboratory work in pathogenic microbiology at UWF, the practical route is MCB3020L earlier in the sequence, or a directed study, or the medical laboratory sciences programme in the College of Health, which carries clinical microbiology laboratories of its own.

⚠ Offered concurrently with the graduate MCB5205

• UWF teaches this course in the same room as its graduate counterpart, MCB5205, with graduate students assigned additional work.
• ⚠ The undergraduate section is not a lighter course. The lectures, the readings and the examinations are shared; what differs is the extra assignment load on the graduate side. Expect graduate pace.
• This is a genuine advantage if you are considering graduate study — it is an honest preview of the level, and the faculty member teaching it is one who could later write your reference.

⚠⚠ 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.

MCB4203 is 3 semester hours at the University of West Florida, through the Department of Biology, College of Science and Engineering.