Principles of Microbial Diversity, by James Brown

Published by ASM Press

A new textbook on microbial diversity has just been published by ASM Press. Principles of Microbial Diversity is a relatively thin textbook (392 pages) that is intended for undergraduate students who need to follow a course on microbial diversity, hence filling a gap in the available teaching material. His author is James W. Brown, a professor at North Carolina State University.

The book is pleasant to read and richly illustrated by hundreds of micrographs. But what is quite original, and to me very justified, is the author's perspective, which is, in James Brown's own words in the preface, "phylogenetic and organismal, from the Carl Woese school".  I applaud that! Woese, as I discussed in a previous post, revolutionized biology by showing that we had until then totally ignored a whole distinct domain of life, the Archaea. This discovery was made through the careful analysis of the sequence of 16S rRNA gene (not an easy feat in the days of Woese's work). Because of this pedagogical and scientifical choice, Brown's book dedicates lots of pages to introduce phylogenetic concepts. Notably, he gives a didactic and useful explanation of how to construct a phylogenetic tree (Chapter 3). Brown explains his focus as follows (p. 351):

"In this book, the vantage point from which all of microbial diversity is viewed is the phylogenetic perspective. Other perspectives are possible and are very useful. Medical microbiology views the microbial world from the perspective of its influence on microbe-human interactions and human health. Environmental microbiology views the microbial world from the perspective of biogeochemical processes and ecosystems. […] However, the organizing principle of biology is evolutionary theory. The phylogenetic perspective is the view of biological diversity as the outcome of evolutionary history. This perspective is not exclusive of any other perspective on microbiology, but instead enriches these other perspectives."

Brown's textbook contribution is very welcome, and should find a place in each university's library.

Example of book photo. The eukaryote Arcella. Source: Wikimedia Commons

References:

• Brown, J. W. (2015) Principles of Microbial Diversity. ASM Press, Washington DC. 392 pages.