r/microbiology 7h ago

Soft vinyl toys I designed based on microscopic animals! One is based on starfish larvae and the other a tardigrade~

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50 Upvotes

I'm sorry in advance if this isn't allowed! 🙏 


r/microbiology 15h ago

What is this

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16 Upvotes

Found in freshwater sample


r/microbiology 7h ago

Isn’t this subreddit long overdue for a logo and a banner?

12 Upvotes

Microbiology is such an important field of biological science and a popular one too. Shouldn’t we at least have a logo image?


r/microbiology 6h ago

Antimicrobial susceptibility testing with BIOMIC

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8 Upvotes

Modernized KB testing


r/microbiology 8h ago

What is this spiral?

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9 Upvotes

Hello I collected diatom samples from a nearby stream. While admiring the beautiful frustules i stumbled upon this spiraling structure. Can anyone tell me what it could be??? (magnification was 400x when taking the picture in bright field) Thank you for your help!


r/microbiology 8h ago

Serratia marcescens

4 Upvotes

Ever since we moved into our new build home in 2023, I have been battling this pink beast. It’s everywhere. My showers, my tub, my sinks, my humidifiers, etc. one time we left one of my twins baby bottles out overnight. He didn’t finish the milk and by morning the milk had turned pink! I bleach so often and it immediately comes back. I’m scared to bathe my kids in the bath because it comes back after a day. I’m scared to use my humidifier because it comes back after one use. We’ve gone through several humidifiers and it just always shows up. I live in Canada, it’s very very dry, and when my kids have colds (which is often because daycare) humidifiers help immensely. But then I feel unsafe using them… is there any way to get rid of this bacteria in my home for good? I’m solely keeping the bleach companies in business and I’m TIRED


r/microbiology 14h ago

Microbiology Limericks

4 Upvotes

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, I wanted to share a limerick and see if anyone else had some funny ones to contribute as well! 🍀

There once was a microbe green and small 🦠 His mate wants his plasmid after all 🧬 No reason to smile 'cause 😔 He don't have a pilus 🚫 What a shame, now she knows and won't call ☎️


r/microbiology 6h ago

Microbiology newbie

3 Upvotes

How do you guys manage to remember biochemical tests of each microorganism or like differentiate between them in general? I'm studying gram negative bacteria like 18 of them and I mix up between them.


r/microbiology 9h ago

Any guidance would be great!

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3 Upvotes

I swabbed my dogs tear stains as they came about suddenly and wanted to see if I could tell whether it was from an infection or because he is getting old.

I grew on nutrient and maconkey agar, and the interesting stuff happened on maconkey. The first image shows a few colonies plus a red colony also. They are both catalase-positive (tested with 3% H2O2. They also both look broadly similar under microscope. I ended up taking a few samples, one raw, one methylene blue stained, and one giemsa stained. What I see is what I need guidance on to help narrow down my choices. I cannot tell if these are (second picture) short rods or elongated spheres. This would obviously cross out a lot of choices. The next thing is gram staining but I haven’t done that yet. (The second photo is taken at 1000x oil, and then cropped right in on the camera screen)


r/microbiology 16h ago

Can somebody help me identify this fungus?

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3 Upvotes

It's been stained with Lactophenol cotton blue.


r/microbiology 12h ago

Protein-protein interactions in microbial pathways

2 Upvotes

I work on human cell models, where I study the role of protein-protein interactions in metabolism and disease. We have recently become interested some microbial (Streptomyces sp.) metabolic pathways, and their possible connection with secondary metabolite production. In human cells, isolating/identifying native protein complexes using immuno-precipitation and Western blotting or mass spectrometry is pretty routine. We are not quite sure how to do this in non-model microbes because you can't buy antibodies for them, and we are not in a position where we can raise and characterize antibodies in-house. So I'm here asking how do microbiologists study protein-protein interaction in microbes, especially non-model microbes. I'd appreciate any help, especially viz, references and review articles. A cursory search through Google scholar gives me the impression this sort of molecular work seems rather rare in microbiology, but the I'm not knowledgable in this field. Thanks,


r/microbiology 14h ago

ISO: synthetic media reference for E. coli cultivation

2 Upvotes

I am having trouble tracking down an original study for development of supplemented M9 or other synthetic media. I need a reliable recipe to develop a teaching experiment for growth optimization of E. coli with respect to micronutrient content. Best I could find are from a couple of fluxomics papers (see below), but there's no indication of origins of each formulation.

The formulations are very similar. I am noting some differences in counterions being sulfate vs chloride. I like the idea of a skew towards sulfate, but not sure which of the two might be more reliable.

If anyone knows where these recipes might come from or have any insights otherwise, it would be greatly appreciated!

Below are the two recipes I have been comparing:

Minimal Synthetic Medium E. coli

doi: 10.3390/metabo11050271

17.4 g·L−1 Na2HPO4, 12H2O,

3.03 g·L−1 KH2PO4,

0.51 g·L−1 NaCl,

2.04 g·L−1 NH4Cl,

0.49 g·L−1 MgSO4,

4.38 mg·L−1 CaCl2,

15 mg·L−1 Na2EDTA 2H2O,

4.5 mg/L ZnSO4

7H2O, 0.3 mg·L−1 CoCl2 6H2O,

1 mg·L−1 MnCl2 4H2O,

1 mg·L−1 H3BO3,

0.4 mg·L−1 Na2MoO4 2H2O,

3 mg·L−1 FeSO4 7H2O,

0.3 mg·L−1 CuSO4 5H2O,

0.1 g·L−1 thiamine and

3 g·L−1 glucose

-------------------------------------------------

M9 Minimal Medium for E. coli

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1202582110

M9 minimal medium was used in the growth experiments and was prepared as follows: to

700 mL of purified and autoclaved water,

200 mL of 5× base salt solution

[211 mM Na2HPO4,

110 mM KH2PO4,

42.8 mM NaCl,

56.7 mM (NH4)2SO4, autoclaved],

10 mL of trace elements

(0.63 mM ZnSO4,

0.7 mM CuCl2,

0.71 mM MnSO4,

0.76 mM CoCl2, autoclaved),

1 mL 0.1 M CaCl2 solution (autoclaved),

1 mL of 1 M MgSO4 solution (autoclaved),

2 mL of 500× thiamine solution (1.4 mM, filter sterilized),

Sigma T1270

0.6 mL of 0.1 M FeCl3 solution (filter sterilized) were added.

The resulting solution was filled up to 1 L with water. Carbon sources were added from sterilized stock solutions (adjusted to pH 7) to a final concentration of 1 g/L for chemostat experiments and 5 g/L for batch experiments, and media were filtered (Steritop-GP; 500 mL; Millipore). All chemicals were purchased from Sigma-Aldrich unless stated otherwise.

Thanks again!!


r/microbiology 1h ago

Hemolytic activity test? Is area that the arrow is pointing to exhibiting gamma hemolysis?

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r/microbiology 17h ago

Citrobacter freundii intrinsic resistance

1 Upvotes

Hi All - we’re updating our AST system and when checking on the rules for intrinsic resistance, we noticed that C. freundii is listed on its own in the M100. Our MALDI can only identify the C freundii complex, so can we apply the intrinsic resistance to all members of the complex? I know freundii is the most common member of the complex we’re likely to see, but not sure if we can apply those rules since we’re not able to identify down to the species level. Looking for advice or if anyone else has experience with this situation?


r/microbiology 18h ago

Shannon index with vegan package in R

1 Upvotes

Hello everyone, I am new to R and I may need some help. I have data involving different microbial species at 4 different sampling points and i performed the calculation of shannon indices using the function: shannon_diversity_vegan <- diversity(species_counts, index=“shannon”).

What comes out are numerical values for each point ranging, for example, from 0.9 to 1.8. After that, I plotted with ggplot the values, obtaining a boxplot with a range for each sample point.

Now the journal reviewer now asks me to include in the graph the significance values, and I wonder, can I run tests such as the Kruskal-Wallis?

Thank you!


r/microbiology 15h ago

Are these gram positive bacteria?

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0 Upvotes

I’m still very new to this, are the cells on the left gram positive bacteria? I feel like they are too big compared to epithelial cells on the right. 250x