Question

How to memorize difficult names of microbes

Answer 1

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I am going to tell yiu my strategy to remember them. First many names are hard to remember because they are long, with strange words and complicated to pronunciate it. Second missing good ortography and writing sends everything to sh*t in an exam.

What I do is to investigate the origin of the name, Wikipedia is a good source. Many genus and species are related to the surname of the scientist or scients that discovered it or the site in the body they were found or any charasteristic like morphology, grouping, color, etc. For example Escherichia coli; its name has a surname, which? The genus. Escherichia comes from the scientist that discovered it, Theodor Escherich, and coli from the latin word for long intestine.I correlate the bacterium with the disease(s) it produces.For writing and pronunciation divide the name in syllables or in words you remember in latin. For example: Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans. What? Yes, it exists and is the main cause of Acute periodontitis and it has very interesting strategies to cause this disease. Anyway, let’s return to the point. You can divide the name in syllables or divide it in words you know their meaning, i.e. Aggregati (aggregate), bacter (bacterium), actino (filament), mycetem (word derive from myco that means fungus), comitans (means accompaniment or in parallel).Write the name and say it repeatedly until you put it in your memory.