Prescott's Microbiology 8th Edition by Joanne Willey, Linda Sherwood, Christopher J. Woolverton, Lansing Prescott, John Harley, Donald Klein

Exercise 3

What did Pasteur prove when he showed that a cotton plug that had filtered air would trigger the microbial growth when transferred to the medium? What argument made previously was he addressing?

Step 1 of 2

Louis Pasteur demonstrated that if he filtered air through cotton and that same cotton was put into sterile medium, he could get microbes to grow. The cotton was shown to contain spores. This showed that there are microorganisms in the air that can contaminate sterile media. This also indicated that there were hard to kill microbes present and that sterilization must be thorough to get rid of them.