Five years ago, Tasha Sturm shared a photo of an agar plate full of colorful bacterial colonies in the shape of a handprint. Perhaps you remember seeing it on social media. This bacterial handprint came from her son’s hand after playing outside. But before the handprint photo, Sturm had been growing a collection of photos of bacteria and fungi.
Microbial unknowns project goes online
For the last 17 years, Sturm has been a lab coordinator at Cabrillo College, where she sets up labs for the microbiology, physiology, and anatomy courses. Previously, she had graduated with a BS in biology and a minor in immunology from Cal State Fullerton. In the microbiology lab, a project that students do at the beginning of every semester is the “unknowns” project. Students swab the environment around them and apply the invisible microbes they might have picked up on an agar plate. Some of the best environments of choice: water bottles, the bottom of a shoe, the railing where birds sit, and of course, hands, Sturm says. The experiments show the students that microbes are everywhere.
Now, her photos are helping the lab tackle remote teaching during COVID-19. “When we had to pivot within two weeks, I was able to make the unknowns [project] and the finals strictly using the pictures I have taken over the past 17 years,” says Sturm. The course instructors created an online study guide using the photos and instead of students having to come to class to look at the results, they could look at their specific labs online.
Environmental contaminants
Like the unknowns project that the students do each year, environmental microbes are also the source of Sturm’s photos. “I’ll pour 500 plates and maybe five are contaminated. It’s usually a fungal contaminant or a yeast,” she says. “It’s like when life gives you a lemon you make lemonade, except with contaminated plates!” She saves those plates for photographs, and the microbiology lab instructors bring her plates with contaminants or interesting growth for the photos.
But she never opens the plates. “That is not very safe,” she says. “You have no idea what you have on your hand or what’s in the dirt.” Once the plates have been swabbed, they should be kept in the lab and disposed of properly, she recommends.
#DescribeThatMicrobe A flowing Bacillus networking across the plate, from a shoe swab. #SciComm #Science #Microbiology @ASMicrobiology @SfAMtweets pic.twitter.com/609mJqtokA
— Tasha Sturm (@tasturm1) September 25, 2020
Her recent project, #DescribeThatMicrobe, gives viewers a close up look into the growth patterns and structures that microbes form, likening them to fireworks, noodles, and the moon, for example. “Bacillus subtilis is probably my favorite organism because it photographs very well,” says Sturm. “It’s intricate and has a lot of character.” Aside from agar plates, she has found beauty in fruits and yogurts succumbing to fungus and have included these in her series.
She notes the uniqueness of each of these plates and how differently the patterns and interactions look between the microbes. “People have tried to reproduce the handprint [that went viral] and they say, ‘I can’t get it to look that way,’” she explains. The environment around you is always changing and things like hand washing, climate, and light lead you to your own unique microbial handprint. With microbial handprints, you’re capturing a moment in time.
For more microbial contaminants, head over to our blog post on a contaminant that looks like noodles!
Enjoy this post? Check out the entire Meet a Microbiologist series!
