The field of microbiology has never been as near to the fore of the general public’s consciousness as it has been in recent years.Some areas that have traditionally been the focus of particular attention are more relevant than ever. These relate to, for example,situations where microbes contribute to disease and food spoilage. In the former case, the availability of hourly updates relating tothe recent major events such as the Ebola outbreak in Africa, the emergence of Zika virus in South America or the Shiga toxinproducing Escherichia coli outbreak in Germany in 2011 have had a major impact. In other traditional areas of microbiology, suchas the application of microbes for commercial use by the food, agriculture and pharma industries, the developments have had apredictably lower profile but are nonetheless important. What is entirely novel is the way in which advances in molecular biology,next generation sequencing and bioinformatics, in particular, have reinvigorated several microbiology-associated fields of research(including those listed above) and lead to the emergence of several new areas of endeavor