Microbiology and Immunology

Pittman, Margaret WORLD OF MICROBIOLOGY AND IMMUNOLOGY

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See alsoLaboratory techniques in immunology; Laboratory

techniques in microbiology

PPittman, Margaret ITTMAN, MARGARET(1901-1995)

American bacteriologist

An expert in the development and standardization of bacterial

vaccines, Margaret Pittman advanced the fight against such

diseases as whooping cough (pertussis), tetanus, typhoid,

cholera, anthrax, meningitis, and conjunctivitis.

Pittman was born on January 20, 1901 in Prairie Grove,

Arkansas, the daughter of a physician, James (“Dr. Jim”)

Pittman, and the former Virginia Alice McCormick. The fam-

ily moved to nearby Cincinnati, Arkansas, in 1909. Her father

was the only doctor in that rural area, and she sometimes

helped him on his rounds or with anesthesia. Her formal edu-

cation was sporadic until three years of high school in Prairie

Grove and two years of music seminary in Siloam Springs,

Arkansas. As a member of the class of 1923 at Hendrix

College, Conway, Arkansas, she double-majored in mathemat-

ics and biology, and won the Walter Edwin Hogan

Mathematics Award in 1922. From 1923 until 1925 in Searcy,

Arkansas, she taught and served as principal at Galloway

Woman’s College, which merged with Hendrix in 1933. She

received her M.S. in 1926 and her Ph.D. in 1929, both in bac-

teriology from the University of Chicago.

Pittman’s landmark article of 1931, “Variation and

Type Specificity in the Bacterial Species Haemophilus

Influenzae,” showed that the pathogenicity (disease-causing

quality) of this microbe is determined by minor differences in

its physical nature, such as the presence or absence of a poly-

saccharide capsule. For all microbes, these differences can be

classed as strains or types. Pittman identified six serotypes of

Haemophilus influenzae, which she labeled “a” through “f.”

Serotype b (Hib) is the most pathogenic, causing meningitis

and several other serious infections. Her work led to the

development of polysaccharide vaccines that immunize

against Hib.

Pittman conducted her bacteriological research at the

Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (later Rockefeller

University) from 1928 to 1934, at the New York State

Department of Health from 1934 to 1936, and from 1936 until

the end of her career at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Among the subjects of her research were tetanus, toxins and

antitoxins, sera and antisera, the genus Bordetella, the Koch-

Weeks bacillus, the standardization of vaccines, and cholera.

Some of this work was done abroad under the auspices of the

World Health Organization(WHO). In 1957, Pittman became

the first woman director of an NIH laboratory when she was

chosen chief of the Laboratory of Bacterial Products in the

Division of Biologics Standards. She held that post until she

retired in 1971. Thereafter she lived quietly but productively

in Temple Hills, Maryland, serving occasionally as a guest

researcher and consultant for NIH, the U.S. Food and Drug

Administration (FDA), and WHO, and remaining active in the

United Methodist Church, especially through Wesley

Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. She died on

August 19, 1995.

In 1994, NIH inaugurated the Margaret Pittman Lecture

Series and the American Society for Microbiology presented

its first Margaret Pittman Award. On October 19, 1995, John

Bennett Robbins (b. 1932) and Ronald D. Sekura, both of the

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

(NICHD) published an article in the New England Journal of

Medicine, announcing their new pertussis vaccine, based on

Pittman’s research at the FDA.

See alsoAntiserum and antitoxin; Bacteria and bacterial

infection; Meningitis, bacterial and viral; Pneumonia, bacter-

ial and viral; Serology; Tetanus and tetanus immunization;

Typhoid fever

PLAGUE, BUBONIC•seeBUBONIC PLAGUE

PPlankton and planktonic bacteriaLANKTON AND PLANKTONIC BACTERIA

Plankton and planktonic bacteriashare two features. First,

they are both single-celled creatures. Second, they live as

floating organisms in the respective environments.

Plankton and planktonic bacteria are actually quite dif-

ferent from one another. Plankton is comprised of two main

types, neither of which is bacterial. One type of plankton, the

one of most relevance to this volume, is phytoplankton.

Phytoplankton are plants. The second type of plankton is zoo-

plankton. These are microscopic animals. Phytoplankton form

the basis of the food chain in the ocean.

Phytoplankton are fundamentally important to life on

Earth for several reasons. In the oceans, they are the beginning

of the food chain. Existing in the oceans in huge quantities,

phytoplankton are eaten by small fish and animals that are in

turn consumed by larger species. Their numbers can be so

huge that they are detectable using specialized satellite imag-

ing, which is exploited by the commercial fishing industry to

pinpoint likely areas in which to catch fish.

Phytoplankton, through their central role in the carbon

cycle, are also a critical part of the ocean chemistry. The carbon

dioxide content in the atmosphere is in balance with the content

in the oceans. The photosynthetic activity of phytoplankton

removes carbon dioxide from the water and releases oxygen as

a by-product to the atmosphere. This allows the oceans to

absorb more carbon dioxide from the air. Phytoplankton, there-

fore, act to keep the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide from

increasing, which causes the atmosphere to heat up, and also

replenish the oxygen level of the atmosphere.

When phytoplankton die and sink to the ocean floor, the

carbon contained in them is lost from global circulation. This

is beneficial because if the carbon from all dead matter was

recycled into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, the balance of

carbon dioxide would be thrown off, and a massive atmos-

pheric temperature increase would occur.

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