BSX-3142 Assignment 1 Trends in Microbiology Review

Title: Frontiers in environmental microbiology and microbial biotechnology

Introduction (key themes):

• Microbial diversity in the biosphere
• The roles and functions of microorganisms
• Advances in methodologies to study microbial ecology
• Applications of microorganisms in biotechnology (including examples)

The diversity of microbial cellulose-degraders, their related enzymes, and applications in biotechnology (key themes):

• What is cellulose?
• Why is it important/abundant in the biosphere?
• Diversity of cellulose-degrading microorganisms
• What mechanisms do cellulose degraders use?
• How have they been applied in biotechnology?
• What are the next frontiers in using hydrolases in biotechnology?

Conclusion (key themes):

• Summarise the key themes and take-home messages from the review
• Highlight any ongoing issues or developments
• Provide an outlook on the future research priorities and new directions in the field

Some questions to ask about your review:

Are all of the key concepts covered?

Do you have a good balance between environmental microbiology content and biotechnology content?

Does the review have a clear structure and narrative with a logical flow?

Do you provide specific examples or some quantitative data/evidence to illustrate your points?

Does the conclusion summarize the key messages from the review and provide a future outlook.

Do you place emphasis on the science, rather than the review article itself, individual scientists, the public, or specific fields of biology? Avoid ‘this review will’ ‘scientists need to know how’ etc.

Is the language used ‘objective’ rather than subjective, colloquial or journalistic? [more information]

Is there evidence of wider reading on the topic beyond the lecture notes and key references provided?

Is the language appropriately specific? i.e. is it clear enough and could it be mis-interpreted?

As the review is about ‘frontiers’ in these fields – have you explained the exciting new developments and future potential for application of enzymes/organisms in these areas?

Extra notes:

• When using numbers in the main text, spell them out rather than using digits
• Please also check the Turnitin similarity scores of your assignments, as some are a little high and contain sentences where strings of words are identical to other sources.