Introduction to Microbial Genetics

in this video we're going to begin our introduction to microbial genetics. And so the term genome is a term that is referring to the complete set of genetic material in a cell. In other words it's referring to all of the DNA. Within a living organism. And so this term genome is a term that you will hear several times as we move forward through our video lessons. Now organisms have the ability to transfer genetic information. And so we refer to this as gene transfer. And this is really just the sharing of genetic information. And this can occur between microbes in two ways. The first way is by vertical gene transfer and the second way is by horizontal gene transfer. Now vertical gene transfer is going to be the transfer of genetic information between a parent cell and it's offspring via replication. And so as a parent cell replicates and divides to create more cells it will transfer genetic information from the parents sell to the offspring. And so if we take a look at our image down below on the left hand side over here notice we're showing you vertical gene transfer. And so notice that in vertical gene transfer the exchange of genetic material is going to be from parent to offspring. And so in this case here you can see that we've got an image here. It says this gene is for you my son. And over here you can see the offspring is saying thanks dad. And so the exchange of genetic material here the D. N. A. Is being transferred from parent two offspring and that is vertical gene transfer. Now the second way that gene transfer can occur through horizontal gene transfer. And this is going to be the transfer of genetic information between two organisms that are actually not direct descendants of one another. And so it's not going to be the transfer between parent and offspring. Instead it's going to be like the transfer between two neighbors to organisms that are not related by parent offspring. And so here noticing this image on the right, we're showing you an example of horizontal gene transfer. And so here what you can see is that the D. N. A. Or the genetic material is being exchanged between two individuals that are not related to each other parent to off strength. And so in this case you can see on the left that's saying hey friend I have this gene for you. And this uh sell over here is saying thanks buddy. And so you can see that the relationship between these two organisms is not parent offspring instead. Uh These two microbes could be completely different bacterial species and they can exchange genetic material horizontally. And so we'll get to talk more about horizontal gene transfer uh as we move forward through our course. But for now this year concludes our introduction to vertical gene transfer. And horizontal gene transfer. Um Now one thing that is also important to note is that gene transfer only occurs in one direction only goes from the donor cell to the recipient cell. So in this case notice that the gene transfer is going from parent to offspring. But it doesn't it doesn't go backwards, it goes only in one direction and the same thing in horizontal gene transfer. It's only going to go from the donor to the recipient in that direction. Uh huh. During that one specific dream transfer event. And then of course this one could conduct horizontal gene transfer again, but again, when in the single event of one horizontal gene transfer, the genetic material is being transferred only in one direction from donor to recipient cell. And so this year concludes our brief introduction to microbial genetics. And so we'll be able to get some practice applying these concepts moving forward and learn more as well. So I'll see you all in our next video.

in this video we're going to introduce our map of the lesson on microbial genetics which is this image that you see down below right here. And so this image does represent a map of our lesson moving forward on microbial genetics and the way that we're going to explore this map is by covering the left most branches first and working our way from left to right in this fashion that you see here. And so we're going to start off talking about mutations and different types of mutations including point mutations, frame shift mutation, spontaneous mutations and induced mutations. Then once we finished talking about those, we'll move on to talk about methods of inducing mutations including mutations and carcinogens and the differences between the two. Then we'll talk about some important cell types when it comes to specific types of mutations such as proto troughs and Ozzy troughs. We'll talk about mutant detection including direct and indirect detection of mutants. We'll talk about the aims test to identify mutations. Then we'll talk about DNA repair mechanisms that cells are able to use such as repairing nucleotide mismatches, repairing damaged DNA repairing thiamine die MERS and S. O. S repair. Then we'll talk about genetic exchange, specifically mechanisms of horizontal gene transfer which includes transformation trans direction and conjugation. Then we'll talk about genome variability including mobile genetic elements. Then we'll talk about CRISPR CAs nine, a bacterial defense mechanism. And we'll cover these topics in the order that you see here in this map from left to right. And so um you can use this image moving forward as a guide to help you, uh, figure out where we are within the lesson and where we intend to go next. And so that being said, I'll see you all in our next lesson video to talk about the different types of mutations, so I'll see you all there.