Tiny Earth Initiative – BIG Impact!

Tiny Earth (TE) challenges over 10,000 students to solve a “real-life” medical problem – antibiotic resistance – while training for higher-paying STEM jobs. Real research projects like TE increase STEM diversity by better engaging women and minorities with a reason for their training. The World Health Organization celebrates Antibiotic Awareness Week November 14-20 to raise awareness about the importance of properly using antibiotics. Since antibiotics were first developed in the 1940’s, they have saved countless lives. However, we have overused and misused antibiotics and are now confronted with the idea of an “antibiotic winter”, where bacterial pathogens have evolved resistance to these life-saving drugs rendering them useless. To make matters worse, the big pharmaceutical companies are not investing in research for new antibiotics because rediscovery rate is high. Antibiotics are simply not as profitable as other drugs. Academia and citizen science can fill this gap in novel antibiotic discovery by doing the initial discovery process, while teaching students valuable microbiology techniques. Once potential products are identified, then academic-private partnerships can be formed to get the antibiotic through testing and perhaps to market. Tiny Earth (TE) is one such academic group sifting through hundreds of thousands of soil microbes for new

Weird Tiny Life Through the Lens

There’s nothing weirder or more beautiful than microscopic life. My interview for Weird Animal Question of the Week and some additional images. Since the first time I peered at pond water under the microscope, I’ve been transfixed by this tiny world. It’s beautiful, amazing, and often seems unreal. The patterns, structures, and neat lifestyles of microscopic critters are simply mind-blowing. Nowadays I most frequently think of bacteria, but there’s sooo many other interesting microscopic things as well – from viruses and fungi to microscopic insects, mites, and relatives of crabs, to single-celled algae and protists. I was thrilled beyond belief when Liz Langley, a science writer for National Geographic’s Weird Animal Question of the Week, asked me about interesting microscopic life. It was so much fun talking to Liz and thinking of some of the rest of the microscopic world I wanted to put up some other beautiful and interesting microscopic critter links if anyone is interested. Ernst Hackel’s drawings are simply phenomenal: Art Forms in Nature (also with CD of images, or a coloring book version; art blog post) Jabez Hogg’s The Microscope also has some pretty amazing drawings of microscopic life in it. Some of the plates are isolated nicely

Antibiotic Awareness Week 2016 – Some Resources

The World Health Organization declared November 14-20, 2016 as Antibiotic Awareness Week to highlight the importance of safely using antibiotics to limit the spread of antibiotic resistance. This week, Antibiotic Awareness Week 2016, I’ll be highlighting some great resources and fabulous work being done to try to save us from an “Antibiotic Winter” – a time when bacteria cannot be killed by our strongest antibiotics. If you’ve ever questioned the evolution of antibiotic resistance or how quickly it can happen, watch this amazing video below. Each rectangle on the plate is an increasing concentration of antibiotic. In TWO WEEKS the bacteria are resistant to the strongest dose (100,000 times the starting concentration). If you are interested in an EXCELLENT general book about the problem – read Missing Microbes by Martin Blazer, see my posts below for more details and links to his talks.

Putting the Lid on “Culture as Medium”

Art and science exhibit “Culture as Medium” grew and evolved through its stay in Baltimore. “Culture as Medium” colonized Baltimore during April and May, 2106. An art/science exhibit curated by Margaret MacDonald, Culture as Medium brought art work done with or inspired by microbes to Baltimore. Curator MacDonald, partnered with the Baltimore Under Ground Science Space (BUGSS), Project Bridge, and Mostly Microbes to provide the perfect bacterial incubator of art and science. I stumbled onto the exhibit through my now favorite social media outlet – Twitter. Dr. Francois Lapointe, a professor of Biology at University of Montreal, Canada posted an article about his “microbiome selfies”. Reading that he’d be performing next in Baltimore, I contacted him. He quickly put me in touch with the curator of the exhibit, Margaret McDonald. “Culture as Medium” was Margaret’s brain child and thesis project for her Master’s of Fine Arts in Curatorial Practice at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Formally a chemist, Margaret became interested in the intersection of art and science. She knew that Baltimore with its strong artistic and scientific communities was an ideal setting for an art-science exhibit.

The Game PATHOGENESIS: A Fabulous Way to Teach Immunology

The game PATHOGENESIS is an excellent deck building game for teaching human-pathogen interactions. Games are such a fun, active-learning way to teach science and science concepts! The game PATHOGENESIS is an incredible new addition to any game closet from community center and classroom to home. It’s strategic and interesting while being scientifically accurate. I’m so in awe of how much thought and care clearly went into the concept, development, and design of the game PATHOGENESIS to create something fun, but educational. It’s obvious that one of the co-designers teaches immunology at a community college. PATHOGENESIS teaches how our three-tiered immune system works to defeat bacterial pathogens. You are the pathogens trying to invade the human body and defeat one of three different body areas: respiratory, gut, or tissue. You build a hand of pathogens with different abilities and attack the body site(s) each turn. As you attack, you gain damage tokens with the winner being the person who collects the most damage tokens when a body site(s) is defeated.