MIIM30011: Medical Microbiology: Bacteriology

Online Weekly Quizzes (10%), MCQ Mid Semester Test (20%), MCQ/Written Exam (70%)

I will begin by saying that this was probably my favourite subject for the semester. The subject was very well coordinated and for the most part, the lecture content was interesting. Moreover, I felt that the subject did indeed live up to its name, with a lot of the content being related back to health and medicine.

As this is a lecture-based subject, it is relatively straight forward. The weekly quizzes however are kind of annoying. They are free marks though so I guess this is a good thing. Sometimes though, the questions on these quizzes IMO were poorly written and had mistakes in them or they were very subjective, especially the true-false questions. (e.g. Salmonella Typhi has a virtually identical genome to Salmonella Typhimurium. True of false?). Thankfully, this did not extend to the MCQs in the test or exam, which were a lot clearer.

In terms of lecturers in this subject, the stand-outs were Liz and Roy.
Liz is a very good lecturer. She is clear and to the point, often finishing her lectures early. She was also happy for people to go and see her to go over some practice questions she gave out, although I never took up the offer.

Roy was my total favourite but I know there are some who don't like him. I think because I had him last year I knew what to expect.
He tells lots of stories and always keeps it interesting. His notes are very brief though so you need to write down a lot of content.
His exam questions are relatively easy and just test the stuff which he talks about.

Dick was okay as a lecturer and explained things well most of the time, although he would always start early and sometimes wrote stuff on the board which was annoying. Thankfully he writes good exam questions. Odilia and Tim were my least favourite. Odilia is very nice but was often too brief with her explanations. Tim is basically just obsessed with genomics and writes really bad exam questions.

In terms of content, this subject starts off at a moderate-high level and this pace seems consistent throughout most of the semester.
There is a lot of content to remember in this subject and it is easy to confuse things so you need to take care both when learning things and also when answering the exam. The whole subject is basically centered around learning from examples. Everything is explained using examples, so you need to know them all.

Initially, you begin learning about bacterial structures and virulence determinants at a superficial level.
Then you hone in on specific bacteria and learn the precise molecular mechanisms of pathogenesis and how different bacteria persist (e.g. pili, adhesins, toxins, effectors etc.). Here you cover the three main niches where bacteria can survive (extracellular, vacuole or lysosome) and learn more examples. There is a fair bit of cell biology involved in this part of the course. This lecture series ends with two rather boring lectures on the various secretion systems used by bacteria to export proteins either into host cells or onto their surface.

Following this, you move into more experimental genetics type content looking at things such as how bacterial genes are regulated (e.g. lac operon, sigma factors, slip-strand mis-repair, two-component systems etc.). This then leads into learning various means of measuring gene expression, identifying virulence genes and touching on how genes are exchanged between bacteria.
In this part, you also learn about the host factors which influence infection and there is also a lecture on microbiota.

My absolute favourite part of the course then follows, which is antibiotics. Here you learn the mechanism of action of certain groups of antibiotics and then the mechanisms of resistance which bacteria have evolved. The major groups which we covered were beta-lactams and aminoglycosides, although some others were mentioned more briefly. Again, you learn about how genetic exchange leads to resistance which is useful because it was explained ordinarily the first time. You also cover some basic laboratory experiments used to determine antimicrobial susceptibility for different isolates.

There were also some more general lectures about vaccination, diagnostic microbiology and genomics.
The vaccination lecture is mostly about non-protein antigens and conjugate vaccines, which is pretty straight forward because it should have been taught at second year. The genomics lectures are boring but okay if you have done genetics in the past, although Tim Stinear is obsessed with genomics and spends more time telling stories and going through case studies than he does actually explaining genomic principles. I enjoyed the diagnostics lectures. A lot of the content covered in these lectures will have already been taught in second year. You go through microscopy, staining, antigen capture assays, PCR, microarrays, biochemical tests and serology.

Following this, the course moves into looking at specific genera of bacteria.
Each lecturer likes to put their own twist onto the content which they cover, but you invariably learn virulence determinants, pathogenesis and symptoms. Then depending on the lecturer, you may cover different aspects of the organism such genomics, lab diagnosis, treatment etc. The bacteria which were covered this year were Clostridia, Mycobacteria, E. coli, Rickettsiae, Coxiella, Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococci and Salmonellae. There are many more examples of bacteria such as Shigella, Vibrio cholerae and Corynebacterium diphtheriae which are covered earlier on in the course.

The final exam is pretty fair. The MCQs are mostly weighted to the second half of the course because this was not covered in the MST, although there still are some MCQs from the first part of the course on the exam as well. The MCQs make up one-third of the exam and the written component makes up two-thirds. There were 5 (20 mark) questions in the written part of the exam, from which you choose 4 to write on. Each question is broken down into part a and b, which are worth 10 marks each. There then may or may not be further sub-parts depending on the question. The important point to note is that part a and b can be completely unrelated in terms of content, therefore, as you have to answer an entire question, you have to study all of the lecture content because different content can be mixed together within the one question.

Doing well on the exam hinges on manging your time properly. Use the reading time to answer as many MCQs as possible. I'd recommend spending at least ~100 mins of exam time on the written questions, substantially more than the recommended 80 mins. One thing which always seems to come up in the written questions is secretion systems, so make sure that you learn these well, including examples. The 2013 exam had an entire 10 mark question on drawing a concept map about genomics. It looked awful and this was part of the question which I skipped. The genomics lecturer went on and on about concept maps so I guess it wasn't unexpected. Unlike me, it might be worth practicing some. There was also an annoying question about vaccines which didn't really make sense, so learn this content well so you will have something to write about should it arise again.

All in all, this is a fairly enjoyable subject if you like microbiology. The important part of succeeding in this subject, aside from memorising all of the content, is to be able to integrate all of the content and relate it back to basic principles of disease. For example, in a lecture towards the end, you may be taught that an effector is a Type III secreted protein. Therefore, in a question about that bacterium on the exam, you would be expected to explain not only the effector, but also the secretion system by which the protein is exported. You should then also be able to explain how it contributes to infection/persistence/damage by the pathogen.The coordinator puts up the basic aims of what you should understand from the entire subject, so keep these in mind when answering exam questions because it is important to keep on topic!

Yes, with screen capture. Dick and Roy tend to start lecturing before the recording begins sometimes.

Elizabeth Hartland, Roy Robins-Browne, Dick Strugnell, Odilia Wijburg, Tim Stinear & a few guest lecturers.

None given. Some lecturers gave some practice written questions at the end of their lecture series.
Most of the lectures also included some learning objectives so you roughly knew what you had to understand.

4.5/5

The textbook for this subject (Bacterial Pathogenesis: a Molecular Approach) is pretty useless. It only covers the first half of the course and even then, a lot of the lecture diagrams are often taken from elsewhere such as journals. I think I used the textbook once because the lecturer explained an experiment poorly. All you will need the textbook for is clarifying minor points. The lectures are self contained and all of the assessment is taken from the lecture content only. Either find an online copy or borrow it from the library. It is certainly not worth buying, especially because microbiology is a rapidly moving field and I think a lot of the content in the book is already outdated.

3 x 1 hour lectures per week

2013, Semester 1

95 H1