there was an era in which micro was a coveted subject.what has happened to the research wing of micro.any ideas as to what is the future if micro in the next 5 years to come?what are the immediate developments in micro?

Just some areas:

- environmental microbiology, often with focus on agricultural aspects, bioremediation or other ecoligical aspects

-infectious diseases

-energy creation including fuel cell, bio gas etc.

-biotechnological microbiology

-systems biology using bacteria as models

just to name a few. Microbiology, as about any field is heavily branching out. One trend is the attempt to created predictive models for bacterial metabolism, though the successes are so far limited to few well-known pathways. The largest impact on this field were achieved due to whole genome sequencing and subsequent postgenome techniques (IMO).

As always, Charon Y has covered all the bases. I would love to see how bacteria can be used to take in carbon dioxide and turn it into plastic monomers. Alternatively, bacteria can be used to break down biodegradable plastics or oil spills. However, one point about genetic engineering - would bacteria that are genetically engineered actually retain their genetic changes in 'the wild' or would they revert back?

It depends a lot on how additional genes were inserted (or existing one manipulated). If it was on a plasmid, and there are no selective pressures to maintain it, chances are high that they get lost and if it was the only change in the genome, you would get the wild-type (that is the technical term). However changes of the chromosome provide additional bases which can mutate. The chances that it will be precisely as before the manipulation are low, with some exception. Sometimes entire regions can get deleted if e.g. there are certain complementary stretches.

 

If you are talking about only the phenotype then the chances are high that they will lose their abilities over time, if they do not confer some kind of selective advantage.