Guten Morgen! Was war gestern schön was hat euch gefreut? Es sind die kleinen Dinge die zählen.
Heute ausnahmsweise Bakterien: die roten Kolonien sind vermutlich Serratia marcescens. Dieses Bakterium ist für viele mittelalterliche Blutwunder verantwortlich. Die Rote Färbung und dass Kolonien schleimige Filme auf feuchten Oberflächen bilden erklärt wie z.B. Hostien über Nacht mit "Blut" durchtränkt waren oder blutige Tränen an Statuen. #diekleinendinge#microbiology#serratia#biodiversity
American pediatrician and microbiologist Hattie Alexander was born #OTD in 1901.
She is particularly renowned for her groundbreaking work on the treatment and prevention of Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib) infections, which cause meningitis, pneumonia, and other serious illnesses, especially in children. In the course of her research on antibiotics, she noted and reported the appearance of antibiotic-resistant strains of Hib which was caused by random genetic mutations in DNA.
Tonight I hosted a screening and discussion of “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”. Everything worked technically and there was a good audience. I am very grateful for my chemistry students who came and contributed to the conversation.
Even if you don’t know Henrietta’s story, you’ve probably benefited from her cells. You can read the excellent book (by the same name) or this: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/henrietta-lacks.
Happy to share our latest paper, in which we examined the timing at which different microbial groups colonized the ocean!
The first author (Carolina Martinez) is starting her lab at UC Santa Barbara in 2024 and is looking to recruit postdocs and PhD students, so if this looks interesting to you, please reach out to her!
A timeline of bacterial and archaeal diversification in the ocean
Happy birthday to Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632 – 1723), the Dutch scientist & progenitor of #microbiology known for his improvements to microscope tech. He was a draper in Delft, then a politician with an interest in lensmaking. Using his handmade #microscopes, he was 1st to observe microorganisms, which he called tiny animals, or "animalcules". He also made pioneering microscopic observations on muscle fibres, bacteria, coffee & … 🧵1/n
anyone know of good online resources for finding traits of bacteria? Ideally a database or large csv file where a bunch of species of bacteria have traits listed such as Gram stain, aerobic needs, etc, but I'll settle for any resources that have consistent information about bacteria.
Wikipedia, for example, hasn't been very consistent in what information it shows for species. #microbiology#biology#bacteria#resourceRequest
I basically wanna make enchant wordle (https://enchantworldle.com/) for species of bacteria lol
I'll figure out what qualifier I'm gonna use eventually, bc there are a lot of bacteria... from what I can find online the number of named species of bacteria is shockingly similar to the number of magic the gathering cards, but I don't think I'll be able to find enough info on all of them and I don't think anyone will have fun playing if all of them are on the table
I could study for my exams, or I could study the significance of whether bacteria contain specific enzymes so I can put that as a neat little explainer on my game
