Microbiology and Immunology

Pfeiffer, Richard Friedrich Johannes WORLD OF MICROBIOLOGY AND IMMUNOLOGY

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useful in the remediation of sites that are contaminated with

petroleum or petroleum by-products.

The bioremediationaspect of petroleum microbiology

has grown in importance in the latter decades of the twentieth

century. In the 1980s, the massive spill of unprocessed (crude)

oil off the coast of Alaska from the tanker Exxon Valdez

demonstrated the usefulness of bacteria in the degradation of

oil that was contaminating both seawater and land. Since then,

researchers have identified many species of bacteria and fungi

that are capable of utilizing the hydrocarbon compounds that

comprise oil. The hydrocarbons can be broken down by bac-

teria to yield carbon dioxide and water. Furthermore, the bac-

teria often act as a consortium, with the degradation waste

products generated by one microorganism being used as a

food source by another bacterium, and so on.

A vibrant industry has been spawned around the use of

bacteria as petroleum remediation agents and enhancers of oil

recovery. The use of bacteria involves more than just applying

an unspecified bacterial population to the spill or the oil field.

Rather, the bacterial population that will be effective depends

on factors, including the nature of the contaminant, pH, tem-

perature, and even the size of the spaces between the rocks

(i.e., permeability) in the oil field.

Not all petroleum microbiology is concerned with the

beneficial aspects of microorganisms. Bacteria such as

Desulfovibrio hydrocarbonoclasticusutilize sulfate in the gen-

eration of energy. While originally proposed as a means

of improving the recovery of oil, the activity of such sulfate

reducing bacteria (SRBs) actually causes the formation of

acidic compounds that “sour” the petroleum formation. SRBs

can also contribute to dissolution of pipeline linings that

lead to the burst pipelines, and plug the spaces in the rock

through which the oil normally would flow on its way to the

surface. The growth of bacteria in oil pipelines is such as prob-

lem that the lines must regularly scoured clean in a process

that is termed “pigging,” in order to prevent pipeline

blowouts. Indeed, the formation of acid-generating adherent

populations of bacteria has been shown to be capable of dis-

solving through a steel pipeline up to 0.5 in (1.3 cm) thick

within a year.

See alsoBiodegradable substances; Economic uses and bene-

fits of microorganisms

PFEIFFER, RICHARDFRIEDRICH

JPfeiffer, Richard Friedrich JohannesOHANNES(1858-1945)

German physician

Richard Pfeiffer conducted fundamental research on many

aspects of bacteriology, most notably bacteriolysis (“Pfeiffer’s

phenomenon”), which is the destruction of bacteriaby disso-

lution, usually following the introduction of sera, specific anti-

bodies, or hypotonic solutions into host animals.

Pfeiffer was born on March 27, 1858, to a German fam-

ily in the Polish town of Zduny, Poznania, a province then

governed by Prussia and later by Germany as Posen, but after

World War II again by Poland as Ksiestwo Poznanskie. After

studying medicine at the Kaiser Wilhelm Academy in Berlin

from 1875 to 1879, he served Germany as an army physician

and surgeon from 1879 to 1889. He received his M.D. at

Berlin in 1880, taught bacteriology at Wiesbaden, Germany,

from 1884 to 1887, then returned to Berlin to become the

assistant of Robert Koch(1843–1910) at the Institute of

Hygienefrom 1887 to 1891. Upon earning his habilitation

(roughly the equivalent of a Ph.D.) in bacteriology and

hygiene at Berlin in 1891, he became head of the Scientific

Department of the Institute for Infectious Diseases and three

years later was promoted to full professor.

Pfeiffer accompanied Koch to India in 1897 to study

bubonic plagueand to Italy in 1898 to study cholera. He

moved from Berlin to Königsberg, East Prussia (now

Kaliningrad, Russia) in 1899 to become professor of hygiene

at that city’s university. He held the same position at the

University of Breslau, Silesia, (now Wroclaw, Poland) from

1909 until his retirement in 1926, when he was succeeded by

his friend Carl Prausnitz (1876–1963), a pioneer in the field of

clinical allergy.

While serving the German army in World War I as a

hygiene inspector on the Western front, Pfeiffer achieved the

rank of general, won the Iron Cross, and personally intervened

to save the lives of captured French microbiologists Lèon

Charles Albert Calmette (1863–1933) and Camille Guèrin

(1872–1961), co-inventors of the BCG (bacille biliè de

Calmette-Guèrin) vaccineagainst tuberculosis.

Pfeiffer discovered many essential bacteriological facts,

mostly in the 1890s. Several processes, phenomena, organ-

isms, and items of equipment are named after him. A Petri dish

of agarwith a small quantity of blood smeared across the sur-

face is called “Pfeiffer’s agar.” In 1891, he discovered a genus

of bacteria, Pfeifferella, which has since been reclassified

within the genus Pseudomonas. In 1892 he discovered and

named Haemophilus influenzae, sometimes called “Pfeiffer’s

bacillus,” which he incorrectly believed to be the cause of

influenza. It does create some respiratory infections, as well as

meningitisand conjunctivitis, but in the 1930s, other scientists

learned that influenza is actually a caused by a virus.

Collaborating with Vasily Isayevich Isayev

(1854–1911), he reported in 1894 and 1895 what became

known as “Pfeiffer’s phenomenon,” immunization against

cholera due to bacteriolysis, the dissolution of bacteria, by the

injection of serum from an immune animal. In 1894, he

noticed that a certain heat-resistant toxic substance was

released into solution from the cell wall of Vibrio cholerae

only after the cell had disintegrated. Following this observa-

tion he coined the term “endotoxin” to refer to potentially

toxic polysaccharide or phospholipid macromolecules that

form an integral part of the cell wall of Gram-negative bacte-

ria. In 1895, he observed bactericidal substances in the blood

and named them Antikörper(“antibodies”).

Pfeiffer died on September 15, 1945 in the German-

Silesian resort city of Bad Landeck, which, after the Potsdam

Conference of July 17 to August 2, 1945, became Ladek

Zdroj, Poland.

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