1. What is a vaccine and how does it work?
2. How would you describe an ideal vaccine? Consider as many aspects as you can think of.
3. Compare and contrast live and killed (inactivated) vaccines in terms of how they’re made and their advantages and disadvantages and provide a couple of specific examples for each.
4. How are subunit vaccines different from DNA vaccines?
5. Summarize methods for identification of unknowns that are based on nucleic acid analysis.
6. What are monoclonal antibodies? Summarize their importance.
7. What is agglutination and how is it used in serology? Give an example or two for its use.
8. What is antibody titer? How does one determine it? Why is its determination useful in demonstrating an infection?
9. Distinguish between direct and indirect immunoassays.
10. What does ELISA stand for? How does it work? Compare and contrast direct and indirect ELISA. (Another acronym for this procedure is EIA.)
11. Immunofluorescence is used to detect rabies virus, Neisseria meningitidis, and various enteropathogenic bacteria, among other microbes. Describe how it works.
12. Describe the principle of immunodiagnostic tests on the example of pregnancy testing. What specifically does the pregnancy kit detect?
13. How does the immunoblotting (Western blotting) work? Describe it briefly.
14. What does FISH stand for and how can it be used in clinical microbiology?
15. What is flow cytometry, how does it work, and how is it useful in monitoring the health of an HIV-infected individual?
16. Imagine you’re investigating an outbreak. Discuss how you would identify the pathogen.
17. Imagine you’re examining a patient. Discuss how you would identify the pathogen. Why is it important to determine sensitivity of microbial isolates to antimicrobial agents?

1. What is a vaccine and how does it work? 2. How would you descri...