Microbiologists of the Past (and Present) by Anna Thompson-Strider

Assignments 4 and 5 History of Microbiology

*American neurologist

Stanley Benjamin Prusiner is an American neurologist and biochemist. Prusiner was born on the 28th of May in 1942 he is now 80 years old. He is the director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of California, San Fransico. Prusiner discovered prions a class of infectious self-reproducing pathogens primarily composed of protein. Prions are proteins that acquire an alternative shape that becomes self-propagating. As prions accumulate, they cause neurodegenerative diseases in animals and humans. Prusiner discovered prions while investigating transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, including scrapie and creutzfeldt-Jackob disease. In 1982 after ten years of research, he and his team produced a preparation from a hamster's brain that contained an infectious agent comprised of only a single protein. He Coined the term “prions” aka “proteinaceous infective particles” that many scientists now believe cause disease by misfolding and recruiting other proteins to do likewise.

🦠🔬✨ Alexandre Yersin ✨🔬🦠

Alexadre Yersin was born in 1863 in Aubonne, Switzerland. Yersin is most Famous for the fact that he was a co-discoverer of the bacillus responsible for the bubonic plague. Earlier called Pasteurella pestis, but later was renamed as Yersinia pestis after Alexandre Yersin. Some other honorable mentions on what Alexadre Yersin achieved in his Life are: 1885 - 1886 Yersin arrived in France where he continued his studies at Hôtel-Dieu de Paris hospital. There, he joined the Institut Pasteur and was involved in vaccination sessions. He discovered the diphtheria toxin with Émile Roux in 1886. 1890 - 1894 He became a ship's doctor for the Messageries Maritimes shipping company. He led three expeditions across the Annam Hinterland. It was June 5th. Mr. Yersin had been sent to Hong Kong, where the plague had already caused 100,000 deaths in Canton. June 20th 1894 he isolated the plague bacillus from plague buboes. Yersin also helped elucidate the role played by healthy human carriers in the transmission of epidemic diseases. 1853-1933 Yersin and Pierre Roux proved that the diphtheria bacillus produces a toxin that causes the signs of the disease. He died in his later home in Nha Trang,Vietnam in 1943