When would Koch’s postulates be utilized?
To determine the cause of a patient’s illness in a hospital microbiology lab
To develop a new antibiotic in a pharmaceutical lab
To determine the cause of a new disease in a microbiology research lab
To formulate a vaccine against a new pathogen in a genetic engineering lab
Whenever the scientific method cannot be used to investigate a microbiological problem
The Correct Answer and Explanation is :
The correct answer is: To determine the cause of a new disease in a microbiology research lab.
Explanation: Koch’s postulates are a set of criteria developed by Robert Koch in the late 19th century to establish a causative relationship between a microorganism and a disease. These postulates are most relevant in a microbiology research lab when investigating new or unexplained diseases. The four postulates are:
- The microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms suffering from the disease, but not in healthy ones.
- The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in pure culture.
- The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism.
- The microorganism must be reisolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and identified as being identical to the original causative agent.
When a new disease arises, scientists must identify the pathogen responsible. Koch’s postulates provide a systematic approach to isolate and characterize the pathogen, ensuring that the microorganism in question is the cause of the disease.
These postulates are foundational in microbiology for establishing causality, especially in the context of emerging infectious diseases. They are applied in a research lab to systematically prove that a specific microbe is the etiological agent of a disease, typically when a new disease emerges and a causative agent is unknown.
In contrast, Koch’s postulates are less applicable in other settings like pharmaceutical labs (where drug development is the focus) or vaccine development (where immunology is often more relevant). Similarly, they would not be used when the scientific method cannot be employed, as Koch’s postulates are inherently part of the scientific method itself.