Microbiology

Regular and Co-op

The who, what, why and how micro-organisms interact and impact the world. Study microbes to improve life.

Microbiology involves the study of diverse micro-organisms such as bacteria, viruses and fungi, and their relevance in medicine, biotechnology, food production and the environment.  The impact and importance of microbiology has never been more apparent than it is today.

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The field of microbiology has application in a variety of fields including: 

Medicine, Human Health and Immunology

• Global outbreaks of infectious diseases and the rapid rise of drug-resistant microbes necessitate research into the development of new antibiotics and vaccines against these emerging pathogens. 
• The discovery that the human microbiome (the collection of microbes that live on and in our bodies) plays critical roles in human physiology is opening up new and exciting avenues to improve human health and combat microbial diseases through microbiome manipulation.
• Discoveries made from studying the bacterial immunity system CRISPR are revolutionizing treatment of human diseases from cancer to neurodegenerative diseases.

Environment

Microbes inhabit almost all environments on our planet and are central in nutrient cycling. Better understanding of these microbes may offer solutions to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and to bioremediate soils and water courses polluted with chemicals or plastics.

Agriculture, Food, and Biotechnology

• Diverse soil microbes positively interact with plants to promote growth and crop sustainability, while plant pathogens (e.g., viruses and fungi) can cause significant crop damage and losses. Understanding these interactions leads to biotechnological applications to sustain food security.
• Microbes such as yeasts and bacteria have been used for centuries in fermentation and food production. With new technologies such as genomics, proteomics and metabolomics it is now possible to determine how the genetics of microorganisms influence the production process, nutrient profiles and flavor characteristics of foods. 

Microbes are also model organisms used in the field of synthetic biology, where genetic engineering techniques are harnessed to produce microbes with novel abilities

What Students Are Saying About FIrst-year Science at the University of Guelph:

Program Details 

The variety of courses offered in the program cover a broad range of topics such as medical microbiology, infectious diseases, immunology, and antimicrobials, as well as environmental and food microbiology. Undergraduate laboratories will provide you with many practical skills in working with a variety of microbes and analyzing microbial processes at both the cellular and molecular levels. In your upper years, you will also have the opportunity to access some of the University of Guelph’s outstanding research labs and facilities through coursework or independant research projects.