Koch's Postulates
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As a skilled microbiologist, you have been called to Farmer McDonald's farm to investigate an outbreak of sores on the udders of his cows. Your first task is to determine whether the causative agent of the sores is a microbe. Explain how you will you use Koch's postulates to accomplish this.
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Solution Summary
This problem asks you to apply the principles of Robert Koch's postulates. The solution answers the question and provides references to peer-reviewed articles used to answer the question. The solution is constructed in a step-by-step format but can be easily modified to suit your particular requirements. Once you read through the solution and consult the references you should be able to adapt the solution and it's concepts to fit your needs.
In addition, a few articles which I recommend as further reading are provided.
Solution Preview
In answering this question you should first state Koch's postulates:
Koch's postulates are the following:
1. The microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms suffering from the disease, but should not be found in healthy organisms.
2. The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in pure culture.
3. The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism.
4. The microorganism must be re-isolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and identified as being identical to the original specific causative agent.
So to figure out if the sores on the cow's udder is the result of a microbe you would apply the above postulates.
To answer the question I would setup the experiment like so:
1. Isolation of pathogen from infected tissue.
a. Using your skilled microbiology techniques, you will scrape off the sore
b. ...
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