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Cystic Fibrosis & the Brewer's Yeast: A Microbiology Tale

Ben Ketchum is an assistant professor at a small college in Montana with just one year left to secure his tenure or he’s going to be out of a job, this at a time when there are already alarming cutbacks going on in science due to Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq War. And as if to complicate his life further, the all important anthrax grant Ben was counting on didn’t come through so now he’s forced to begin a new project, this one involving a different type of microbe than what he’s used to: the brewer’s yeast. To learn all he can about the yeast, Ben takes two weeks off and travels first to exotic Egypt where he discovers the yeast’s role in building this once-great civilization, including brewing beer, making wine, raising bread as well as the pyramids. He then travels to Germany, a more recent example of a beer culture, where he uncovers the yeast’s influence in Western civilization including his own country. Ben’s day-to-day concerns with being a mentor, teacher, and scientist while at the same time having to secure his tenure, is a unifying theme. Each story is woven together with interesting facts about ancient history & science so as to give the reader an appreciation for not only what it’s like to run a modern research laboratory, but also how our everyday world has been shaped by unseen microbes, often for thousands of years. For example, Ben’s search for the brewer’s yeast leads him to uncover details about the Bubonic plague & beer steins, wine amphora, Hitler, beer halls, the Lewis & Clark Expedition, whiskey, pretzels, pasteurization and Egyptian mummies. He also teams up with two eccentric microbiologists and develops a love interest while in Egypt: the beautiful young medical doctor Tahany Hassan. This novel is based on a true story...inspired by the author's experiences in graduate school and as a scientist at Children's Hospital Los Angeles California. In this novel you'll also discover diverse facts about: cystic fibrosis & cholera, proteins, DNA, water, dinosaur fossils, Yellowstone, the US Civil

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