Classes of Infectious Agents

00:01 And, welcome back.

00:02 As we go through these series of talks relating host and pathogen interactions, we need to talk about the different classes of microorganisms so we can give you an overview.

00:14 Again, there is a whole entity of study in biology called microbiology, where you learn about all of these stuff in excruciating detail, and you know, what sugars a bacteria ferments and what pH it likes to live at, we're not going to do that.

00:29 But we are going to give kind of a broad overview of the different bugs that can be encountered in the human body, and then how they would present in terms of the host reaction.

00:41 Here's our roadmap.

00:44 So we already talked about the fundamental concepts of microorganisms including tropisms.

00:48 Now we're going to overview the different classes.

00:51 So, you can probably run down this as quickly as I can, but we have viruses, we have bacteria, we have fungi, protozoans, worms, prions.

01:04 And given the vast variety of these particular pathogens that are out there, it's remarkable that we aren't constantly being infected.

01:12 It just goes to show you how good the immune system is in protecting us.

01:16 Alright, so let's go through these each in turn.