Microbial Sciences, Past, Present and Future - A Conversation

Roberto Kolter

To set the stage for a conversation on our discipline and ideas about its future directions, I will briefly present my interpretation of some of its key developments:

     Pure culture and its long shadow

     Use and abuse of antibiotics

     E. coli and elephants: molecular biology

     From Woese to microbiomes

And, if there's time, we'll question the utility of the concept of microbe.