Need some good microbiology kids books? Take a look at the Reading Round-Up!
Reading Round-Up: Microbiology Books for Kids!
#MicrobeWeek: Continuing the Celebration
More #MicrobeWeek YouTube videos including one we made. Yesterday’s post on #MicrobeWeek featured a fabulous video Microbes of New York from the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). #MicrobeWeek was inspired the current microbially focused exhibition The Secret World Inside You, at AMNH (see my review). AMNH teamed up with BrainCraft, Gross Science, and Science Friday to create four YouTube videos and other content about their favorite microbial research.
Normal disturbance of the microbiome
“Great”, you’re thinking, “I’m covered in little germs microbes and they live on me in their special habitats, icky, but so what?” These microbes may provide specific benefits, such as the nutritional examples mentioned earlier. However, perhaps one of the biggest services these microbes have is simply taking up space! “Niche filling” or “colonization resistance” is an important and essential ecosystem service. In any habitat, there are places to live and nutrients to feed upon. An example is my attempt at gardening. Each spring we clean out the garden and plant seeds and seedlings. Most years we put down weed cloth around the seedlings. My organic gardening teacher recommended planting clover as a cover crop. Both are doing the same thing – filling an available habitat to prevent weeds from colonizing and competing with the plants that we hope to harvest later. This past summer I got busy and didn’t get the weed cloth down. UGH. The weeds overtook the garden this year and we only got a few tomatoes and peppers. The squash, beans, and broccoli were overrun. Bummer – lesson reinforced. Similarly, your microbial ecosystem needs to stay intact, filled, and in balance. Aristotle once said “Nature abhors
From past to present: Studies of the human microbiome
The study of the human microbiome has changed the way we think of ourselves in health and disease. From fecal transplants to pre- and probiotics, popular, basic, and applied sciences, including human medicine are beginning to acknowledge the role of bacteria and other microbes in eukaryotic health. The term” microbiome” was coined in 2001 by J. Lederberg [1]. The first studies to change our perception of what it is to be human, probably started with the first releases of papers from the National Institutes of Health funded Human Microbiome Project (NIH HMP) in 2010 [2] and 2012 [3]. However, the true recorded origins of microbiology and first recorded studies of the human microbiome began with a cloth merchant at the beginnings of the organized study of science in Europe. Past perspectives on the human microbiome In 1677 Antony van Leewenhoeck – a citizen scientist – first described “animalcula” in letters conveyed by a physician friend to the newly formed Royal Society of London [4]. Leewenhoeck’s meticulous and detailed descriptions and measurements of the microscopic world were made through simple microscopes he made out of glass lenses and metal plates. His most powerful microscope magnified an object 266 times! Initially, his