Question: why did you choose to study microbiology?

Katie Fala answered on 11 Nov 2019:

Great question, thanks race42air!

I suppose I love all things science-related, but I ended up focusing on microbiology because I think that microbes get overlooked somewhat (probably because we can’t see them without using microscopes) but they are everywhere and they impact so many aspects of our planet, from human health and food production all the way through to keeping ecosystems ticking over and biogeochemical cycles running!

My degree was quite broad and covered aspects of Human Nutrition, Food Science and Food Production. Some of the parts I found the most fascinating were to do with bacteria involved in agricultural processes, for example the ‘endophytes’ which are bacteria that have evolved to live inside plant cells, or the bacteria associated with roots of plants and soil that are crucial for plants to be able to take up water and access nutrients like Nitrogen – I never really thought about how plants growing could depend on bacteria, fungi and viruses in and on the plants.

Similiarly, I really loved the modules in college that looked at the microbes in and on the foods we eat – they are really crucial to contributing to the food being safe to eat (free from disease-causing bacteria and any toxins that they could produce) as well as the quality – food fermentations are particularly cool because the bacteria fermenting the food are really impacting on the nutrients in the food as well as the flavours and textures, such as the microbes in cheese, yoghurt, kefir, beer, wine, salami.

Lastly, antimicrobial resistance really me so it is important to me to help in the search for new drugs, or new strategies because not enough new antibiotics are being developed at the moment and bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to the antibiotics we have at present.

Sorry this answer is a bit long! Appreciate you asking 🙂