What is the term for the ability of a microbe to cause disease?

Pathogenicity is defined as the ability of a microbe to cause disease. It refers to the characteristics that enable a microbe to enter a host, evade the immune system, and produce detrimental effects leading to disease. Pathogenicity encompasses various factors, including the microbe's ability to adhere to host tissues, produce toxins, and manipulate host cellular functions to its advantage.

Understanding pathogenicity is crucial in microbiology as it helps in identifying and classifying organisms based on their potential to cause disease. While terms like virulence, infectivity, and contagiousness relate to aspects of disease-causing organisms, they each refer to specific facets of the broader concept of pathogenicity. Virulence describes the degree of pathogenicity, infectivity pertains to the ability of a microbe to establish an infection, and contagiousness relates to the ease with which a disease can be transmitted from one host to another. Thus, the concept of pathogenicity is foundational to understanding how and why certain microbes are capable of causing disease.