This laboratory manual has evolved over the years to meet the needs of students taking microbiology at Catonsville Campus of The Baltimore County Community College. The intention is to provide the student with an organized, user-friendly tool to better enable him or her to understand laboratory aspects of microbiology as well as to hopefully make learning laboratory material and preparing for lab quizzes a bit easier.

Each lab exercise is set up as a complete module that demonstrates some microbiological principle or technique. Each exercise begins with a detailed Discussion that provides all the information needed to understand that lab and has key words and phrases presented in boldface. The discussion section is followed by a detailed step-by-step Procedure, again with key elements presented in boldface. The Results section of each exercise is where the student records important results and conclusions that will enable him or her to prepare for the practical portion of each lab quiz. This WWW version of the manual has the advantage of providing students with a complete set of color photographs and photomicrographs of the results for each laboratory exercise to use in reviewing and studying for quizzes. Finally, each lab exercise ends with a set of Performance Objectives that tells the student exactly what he or she is responsible for on lab quizzes.

The lab exercises are designed to give the student "hands-on" laboratory experience to better reinforce certain topics discussed in lecture as well as to present a number of selected microbiological principles not covered in lecture. The first several labs enable the student to master techniques essential in working with and studying microorganisms. The next series covers microbial morphology. A number of labs deal with the laboratory isolation and identification of common opportunistic and pathogenic microorganisms as well as other techniques used in the diagnosis of infectious diseases. Several of the labs pertain to the control of microorganisms.

I hope you enjoy this laboratory manual and also hope it makes your study of microbiology a bit easier. Keep in mind that the labs are meant to be informal and your instructor is more than willing to answer any questions on either lab or lecture topics.

G.E.K.
2005

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