The Today Show on NBC collected some built environment samples to send to space with Project MERCCURI this morning. Here’s the video of them swabbing the set and the primary camera. Very cool… Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Here’s a story that combines two of my favorite topics these days, microbes and space. In this case students from Japan are building a special satellite to house and photograph slime mold growth (Dictyostelium discoideum). I’m not sure exactly what they’ll learn from this, but it sounds cool! Pictures and data will be publicly available …
Quick post here (crossposted from my Tree of Life blog). Our Project MERCCURI got some press coverage relating to an event July 20th with the Arizona Cardinals: Gilbert, Tempe participate in national microbe-swabbing project – East Valley Tribune: Gilbert. From the article: “The event – held at the Arizona Cardinals’ training facility on July 20 – …
Had to post about this recent paper that came out in PLOS ONE, “Spaceflight Promotes Biofilm Formation by Pseudomonas aeruginosa“. Obviously we’re thinking a lot about bacterial activity in space, apropos of our Project MERCCURI work. Really the title says it all here. Biofilms are awesome. Space is awesome. Turns out that biofilms in space …
In my last two posts I described the process of developing the microbial growth experiment we will be running aboard the International Space Station. We’ve tackled growth assays on 96-well plates in zero gravity, at least in theory. How well will this actually work on aboard the space station? To find out, Jenna, Wendy and …
Microtiter plate readers are often used for measuring optical density in liquid media, and this is what we were planning to do. However, they are general purpose, programmable instruments, and there’s no rule that says you have to use them this way. It occurred to me that all of our problems stemmed from the difficulties …
Here is a conundrum: Suppose you want to measure growth rates of bacterial cultures in an aerobic environment, on LB, in 96-well plate format. So, you buy some plates from your favorite supplier, dispense some LB into the wells with a multichannel pipetter, inoculate from whatever your source is, and pop it into your plate …
Well, I did not know there was a shoe fairy out there but apparently there is. See this post Philly Shoe Fairy: Shoe Science! where the Philly Shoe Fairy discusses participating in our Project MERCURRI. This type of response is exactly why we love the idea of partnering with Darlene Cavalier, the Science Cheerleader, because she has …
I’ve put together a collection of photos from the first few sampling events for our microbes in space project (Project MERCCURI). This will be updated as we receive photos from events over the next 6 months or so.
Growing microbes in space sounds cool. Collecting microbes from sporting events is also cool (“excuse me, could I see that basketball after the game?”). Having fans collect samples with a chance that some of them will fly to the space station is a great way to engage people. Put them all together and you get …