Toward First-line Molecular Diagnosis of Ocular Infectious Disease

Technology has driven the development of microbiology since its earliest days. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first observed bacteria through the first microscope in the 1670s. However, it was more than 2 centuries before Robert Koch grew the first pure culture of a bacterium—Bacillus anthracis—in 1881 using sterilized cut potato slices as the medium. Koch was frustrated that many other bacteria visible under the microscope could not be grown on this medium. His assistant Walther Hesse began to experiment with using gelatin to grow bacteria, but he was confounded by the liquefaction of (Read more...)

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