Historical Perspective: Discovery of microbial world; Landmark discoveries relevant to the field of microbiology; Controversy over spontaneous generation; Role of microorganisms in transformation of organic matter and in the causation of diseases.

Methods in Microbiology: Pure culture techniques; Principles of microbial nutrition; Enrichment culture techniques for isolation of microorganisms; antigen and antibody detection methods for microbial diagnosis; Light-, phase contrast-, fluorescence- and electron-microscopy; PCR, real-time PCR for quantitation of microbes; Next generation sequencing technologies in microbiology.

Microbial Taxonomy and Diversity: Bacteria, Archaea and their broad classification; Eukaryotic microbes: yeasts, molds and protozoa; Viruses and their classification; Molecular approaches to microbial taxonomy and phylogeny.

Prokaryotic Cells: Structure and Function: Cell walls, cell membranes and their biosynthesis, mechanisms of solute transport across membranes, flagella and pili, capsules, cell inclusions like endospores and gas vesicles; bacterial locomotion, including positive and negative chemotaxis.

Microbial Growth: Definition of growth; Growth curve; Mathematical expression of exponential growth phase; Measurement of growth and growth yields; Synchronous growth; Continuous culture; Effect of environmental factors on growth; Bacterial biofilm and biofouling.

Control of Micro-organisms: Disinfection and Sterilization—principles, methods and assessment of efficacy.

Microbial Metabolism: Energetics (redox reactions and electron carriers); Electron transport and oxidative phosphorylation; An overview of metabolism; Glycolysis; Pentose-phosphate pathway; Entner-Doudoroff pathway; Glyoxalate pathway; The citric acid cycle; Fermentation; Aerobic and anaerobic respiration; Chemolithotrophy; Photosynthesis; Calvin cycle; Biosynthetic pathway for fatty acids synthesis; Common regulatory mechanisms in synthesis of amino acids; Regulation of major metabolic pathways.

Microbial Diseases and Host–Pathogen Interaction: Normal microbiota; classification of infectious diseases; reservoirs of infection; nosocomial infection; opportunistic infections; emerging infectious diseases; mechanism of microbial pathogenicity; nonspecific defense of host; antigens and antibodies; humoral and cell mediated immunity; vaccines; passive immunization; immune deficiency; human diseases caused by viruses, bacteria, and pathogenic fungi.

Chemotherapy/Antibiotics: General characteristics of antimicrobial drugs; Antibiotics—classification, molecular mechanism of mode of action and resistance; Antifungal and antiviral drugs.

Microbial Genetics: Types of mutation; UV and chemical mutagens; Selection of mutants; Ames test for mutagenesis; Bacterial genetic system: transformation, conjugation, transduction, recombination, plasmids, transposons; DNA repair; Regulation of gene expression: repression and induction; Operon model; Bacterial genome with special reference to E. coli; Phage \u03bb and its life cycle; RNA; mutation in virus genomes, virus recombination and reassortment; Basic concept of microbial genomics.

Microbial Ecology: Microbial interactions; Carbon, sulphur and nitrogen cycles; Soil microorganisms associated with vascular plants; Bioremediation; Uncultivable microorganisms; basic concept of metagenomics and metatranscriptomics.