Clemson University

Influenza! Plague! Ebola! Anthrax! You've seen them in the movies and on TV — microbes are everywhere. But did you also know that microbes helped in the Gulf oil spill? That one day your car may run on gas produced by microbes? That fungi produces antibiotics that may one day save your life? Microbiology majors take a closer look at all these issues and more. Are you interested in infectious disease? At Clemson, you can pursue a general microbiology degree or you can choose to do a major concentration in biomedicine. If you choose to follow the general microbiology curriculum, you'll take one class in each of these three areas — biomedicine, environmental, food and industrial microbiology. Microbiologists seek to describe and characterize organisms in structure, function and processes of reproduction, growth and death at cellular and molecular levels. They are also interested in the ecology of microbes and the interaction with higher-level organisms.