Synchronized E. coli

http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/video/0110geneticclock.mov

Neat experiment Showing bacterial coordination in a cool visual way. All done with E. coli modified to carry a green fluorescent protein

comments open on Micro course blog

Hi all - just set it up so that any of you can comment on articles/posts. Please feel free to participate long after you are done with the course!

along those lines, please feel free to share anything that you find that you think may be of interest to the group

cheers

http://www.atcc.org/CulturesandProducts/PhotoContest/tabid/2007/Default.aspx

Thought this was very relevant to our class - ATCC is holding it's imaging contest. Check out their entries at the above URL - click on "view entries". I think if we had had official ATCC cultures then some of the microbial art pieces you put together would have easily had a shot!  The shot from their page shown below is actually Serratia marcescens - a species that we used this semester too

Thanksgiving micro moment

I love making a turkey soup after our main meal. I go through a ritual of boiling things down, fishing out the bones, seasoning it, etc. It takes a lot of time but man, I look forward to that first bowl of soup.

This year I made a classic microbiological mistake. After a long day I forgot and left the soup out overnight. Yes, earlier it had been boiled but since the boiling a number of us had dipped a nonsterile ladle in. Students should be able to think about how long it took their nutrient broth inoculations from this semester to go from clear to cloudy. I left the soup out for 24 hrs before realizing my mistake - the room was at a good 70 deg F (~20 degC). And yes, essentially this soup was a beautiful nutrient broth.

It broke my heart but I dumped the soup.

Bacteria always win....

Current top 7 in Micro

Who doesn't like a top 10 list, right?

Current top 7 microbiology papers as ranked by the Faculty of 1000. Many of these topics relate to things we've been talking about in class this past month!

http://the-scientist.com/2011/11/15/top-7-in-microbiology-4/

Anti-malarial target, Yeast genome, septin cages as a way of trapping bacteria, mRNA's from bacteria as PAMPs, evolution of mitochondria, microbiome affecting viral infections, apoptosis

E. coli at the fair

Elon's student TV station did a bit on the E. coli outbreak and interviewed me for a few biological tidbits

http://phoenix14news.wordpress.com/2011/11/08/e-coli-outbreak-develops-following-nc-state-fair/

I thought they did a good job - remember that few people who haven't taken a microbiology course appreciate what you guys do. The typical person on the street sees bacteria as an invisible menace and only understands that there are bad ones, not the good side of the story. Heck, even microscopes seem pretty high tech to the general public...

Flu Near You service

sponsored by HealthMap, based on weekly voluntary surveys their goal is to map out and track how flu spreads through the region this year. Free registration to participate. Should be really interesting to monitor this

https://flunearyou.org/