Mikrob - Blog Posts

Hydra (genus)

©️nonotnow photography.

🔬~microscope: biolam r11~

📸iPhone 11

Bacterial Morphology Chart. Poster of full color micrographs depicting basic bacterial shapes and arrangements. x

Yersinia pestis

Yersinia pestis is the bacterium responsible for plague, with the most common manifestations being bubonic plague, septicemic plague, and pneumonic plague.

Image taken via transmission electron microscopy. Bar = 1 μm

Photo credit: Hans R. Gelderblom, Rolf Reissbrodt/RKI

little creature of the day: Euglena gracilis

micro organisms time

image source

virus pattern from Macrovector_official (source). Stay safe everyone!

still amazes me that scientists were just like what if we shot cells with dna coated mini bullets really really hard to insert that dna into the genome. and somehow that fucking worked

microscopy lab dump :]

biblical angels but their true form looks like the patterns in 90s arcade carpets

diatom- any member of a large group comprising several genera of algea, specifically microalgea, found in oceans, waterways, and soils of the world. there's something beautiful about the little details of the world.

These pictures show PAS (purple/pink) and GMS (brown/blue) staining of a lymph node biopsy from a canine patient with lymphadenopathy and weight loss. Histology was suggestive of likely a fungal organism (bright pink in the PAS stain and dark brown/black in the GMS stain), however a mixed infection with an algal species could not be definitively ruled out without microbiology.

Our microbiologist cultured an Aspergillus species from this dog, and is in the process of ruling out any other possibilities.

What's especially cool is in one of the PAS pictures, you can see an organism trapped within an actively dividing macrophage!

i got to work with some HeLa cells today!

as cool of an experience as this was and as interesting as these things are, it’s always important to acknowledge the bad along with the good. Henrietta Lacks’ cells revolutionized so many areas of research, but she deserved so much better.

working with these cells today just really reminded me of the duality of many scientific developments. many things have come with great cost and harm and i think that’s something important to keep in mind.

if you aren’t familiar with the story of Henrietta Lacks, i highly recommend looking her up. there’s a book about her live (the immortal life of henrietta lacks) that’s very illuminating.

I sometimes think about bacteria growing on (in?) an agar plate and how strange it must be from their perspective. To be taken from your (many times hostile) natural habitat and placed in (on?) an alien landscape made entirely of food that caters perfectly to your dietary needs. You live there, and your descendants thrive there for generations after, and then comes a Cataclysm. And they die in an inferno of steam and pressure, suddenly and unexpectedly.

And you never knew you were the fortunate ones. Your brethren lived their lives in other equally alien worlds, except theirs were tailored to kill them, torture them, or starve them of necessary nutrients. Their torment and your bliss serve a purpose ufathomable to you, a purpose of creatures so vast and unknowable, they might as well be Gods.

I think about bacteria sometimes.

A quick little note about this bacterium, Nocardia! These are fascinating to me as, although they are a rod-shaped bacteria, they can form beaded, perpendicularly branching filaments that are acid-fast. They can appear morphologically similar to a different bacteria, the anaerobic Actinomyces, however Actinomyces does not exhibit beading like Nocardia does.

This is a Gram-stain of a bacterial embolus within a pulmonary vessel of an Australian marsupial species, and we were lucky enough to know what genus we were dealing with before culture was performed, purely based on the bacteria's morphology!

New Scientist

The shocking decline of Earth’s microbiome – and how to save it

Bacteria, fungi and other microbes, which are vital to life on Earth, were long thought impervious to threats endangering larger lifeforms.

germophobes stay winning

What are Phytoplankton and Why Are They Important?

Breathe deep… and thank phytoplankton.

Why? Like plants on land, these microscopic creatures capture energy from the sun and carbon from the atmosphere to produce oxygen.

Phytoplankton are microscopic organisms that live in watery environments, both salty and fresh. Though tiny, these creatures are the foundation of the aquatic food chain. They not only sustain healthy aquatic ecosystems, they also provide important clues on climate change.

Let’s explore what these creatures are and why they are important for NASA research.

Phytoplankton are diverse

Phytoplankton are an extremely diversified group of organisms, varying from photosynthesizing bacteria, e.g. cyanobacteria, to diatoms, to chalk-coated coccolithophores. Studying this incredibly diverse group is key to understanding the health - and future - of our ocean and life on earth.

Their growth depends on the availability of carbon dioxide, sunlight and nutrients. Like land plants, these creatures require nutrients such as nitrate, phosphate, silicate, and calcium at various levels. When conditions are right, populations can grow explosively, a phenomenon known as a bloom.

Phytoplankton blooms in the South Pacific Ocean with sediment re-suspended from the ocean floor by waves and tides along much of the New Zealand coastline.

Phytoplankton are Foundational

Phytoplankton are the foundation of the aquatic food web, feeding everything from microscopic, animal-like zooplankton to multi-ton whales. Certain species of phytoplankton produce powerful biotoxins that can kill marine life and people who eat contaminated seafood.

Phytoplankton are Part of the Carbon Cycle

Phytoplankton play an important part in the flow of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the ocean. Carbon dioxide is consumed during photosynthesis, with carbon being incorporated in the phytoplankton, and as phytoplankton sink a portion of that carbon makes its way into the deep ocean (far away from the atmosphere).

Changes in the growth of phytoplankton may affect atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, which impact climate and global surface temperatures. NASA field campaigns like EXPORTS are helping to understand the ocean's impact in terms of storing carbon dioxide.

Phytoplankton are Key to Understanding a Changing Ocean

NASA studies phytoplankton in different ways with satellites, instruments, and ships. Upcoming missions like Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) - set to launch Jan. 2024 - will reveal interactions between the ocean and atmosphere. This includes how they exchange carbon dioxide and how atmospheric aerosols might fuel phytoplankton growth in the ocean.

Information collected by PACE, especially about changes in plankton populations, will be available to researchers all over the world. See how this data will be used.

The Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) is integrated onto the PACE spacecraft in the cleanroom at Goddard Space Flight Center. Credit: NASA

"Wherever you are on your journey to the microcosmos, the odds are high that you'll run into a diatom. They're both abundant and easy to spot because of the shells they encase themselves in. The results are beautiful, exacting geometries that create a living kaleidoscope in the microcosmos. Even if you lived your entire life without ever seeing a diatom, without ever hearing the word "diatom", you would still be living a life that's shaped by them... all the way down to the oxygen you breathe, thanks in no small part to their outsized contribution to the world's photosynthesis."

Journey to the Microcosmos- How Diatoms Build Their Beautiful Shells

Images Originally Captured by Jam's Germs

Astrionella 630x, Bacillaria paxillifer 200x, Diatom 630x, Diatom 630x, Diatom frustule 630x, Diatoms 630x

[March, 2023] culture stains & snow days

A phase-contrast micrograph of a ciliate (Frontonia sp.) digesting blue-green algae (cyanobacteria). 

The cytostome (the “mouth” of the cell) is seen on the right side down.

image: Wiedehopf20 | Wikipedia CC

Microbe masterpiece by Mehmet Berkmen and Maria Penil

gorgeous mold in a petri dish, Sporothrix schenckii

A mushroom cultivated in a petri dish on Agar Agar shows it’s actual shape, the essential part of the mushroom - the Mycel, is usually hidden from the eye. By Aimee Cornwell

Petri dish after being exposed to common household air. Includes Aspergillum, penicillium, green & black rhysopus, & stachybotrum moldm

penicillium in a petri dish

petri dish art by @dashaplesen

🪐

Back when I asked for some concepts in September on my Instagram, @ sammithyst suggested a mon based on Petrie duals, a term in topology that refers to a loop of edges that can split a 3D shape in half in a certain way. Although that was incorporated into the design of this mon (skew polygon "teeth on each dish"), the name reminded me of Petri dishes.

Petri dishes are shallow dishes with a cover that is used to grow all sorts of cells, like bacteria, fungi, and even human cells. Cells can be grown with the growth medium that is put into the dish, some sort of food like some agarose gel or a liquid mixture of nutrients.

Cantri (Poison/Psychic): When dormant, they reside completely inside their dish, only coming out when they run out of the food that dragged in. Despite having many protozoan-like cells in their body, they seem to be resistant to the antibiotics of this world.

Petri Dishes

Although they are scientific I think they make really cool art pieces i like to use them as reference images when practicing how to use colored pencils

close my eyes and make a wish i wanna live together in a petri dish!!!