It is commonly believed that bacteria are microscopic – stealthy and hidden from the naked eye. But the bacterium, Epulopiscium fishelsoni, is a microbial behemoth you can see with the human eye alone. First discovered in the intestines of a brown surgeonfish in the Red Sea in 1985, this giant bacterium was first classified as…
Growing up, Jesus Romo never thought he would become a microbiologist. “I actually wanted to be a paleontologist as a kid and [my parents] always bought me books about dinosaurs and dinosaur toys,” he says. Now Jesus is a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at San Antonio studying fungus in the lab. When…
When the sun vanishes behind the moon, living organisms behave as if twilight is here. Crickets start to chirp, flowers close up, and cows head to the barn. In this year’s highly anticipated solar eclipse, microbes will also fly high in the sky on giant balloons as part of a citizen science project called the…
For most of us, the thought of sanitizing our kitchen sponges never crossed our minds. And that’s probably a good thing. Scientists from Germany recently reported what they found living inside kitchen sponges. They took samples from 14 used kitchen sponges and extracted DNA. What they found was an astounding 54 billion bacteria cells per…
Juliana Ansari is a laboratory supervisor with a predilection for probiotics. At Fairfield University, Juliana coordinates instructional biology labs and runs a research program with undergraduates. As a laboratory supervisor, Juliana designs lab activities, makes media, and maintains bacterial cultures and live animal collections.