If you’re a microbiologist, there’s nothing quite as infuriating as contaminants growing on an agar plate, crowding out growth of your intended microbes. But this often frustrating aspect of microbiology research, turned into something quite the contrary when Greg McCallum, a Ph.D. student at the University of Birmingham, posted a photo of a colleague’s contaminated plate on Twitter.
Characterizing Noodlococcus
“It was found on Rob’s plate,” McCallum says. “He was plating out some Enterococcus. He didn’t throw away the plate for a couple weeks and we saw this contaminant.”
This bright yellow colony stood out amongst the smaller, white, mucoid colonies on the plate. What’s more, this contaminant looked like noodles.
Turning to basic microbiology techniques, they first streaked it out and peered under the scope. The cells were round in shape (aka cocci bacteria) so McCallum and the lab began calling it “Noodlococcus.”
The team then sequenced the entire genome with help from Josh Quick who leads another lab at the university. Based on the sequence, Noodlococcus belongs to the phylum Actinobacteria, but they could not quite pinpoint the exact species match from sequence databases. The closest species match? The soil dwelling bacterium Kocuria rhizophila.
Now, the lab is beginning to find out more: What does it like to grow on? How fast does it grow? “It grows really strangely. The goal is to fully characterize it and confirm it is a new species,” says McCallum.
Creating the Contamination Club
While the lab tinkered away with Noodlococcus’s genome, McCallum documented all of this on Twitter. The comments from other enthusiastic microbiologists kept coming in.
After a week since he had posted Noodlococcus online, McCallum along with his lab mates, Rob Moran, Ross McInnes, and Stanley Ho, created the Contamination Club, a Twitter account where microbiologists can share photos of contaminants and try to identify microbes on the plate as a group.
While many contaminants have been identified through the power of social media, the Contamination Club also had another goal in mind: public engagement. “We wanted to engage with people who aren’t microbiologists as well to spread the coolness of microbiology. And we also wanted to bring together people from different areas of microbiology,” McCallum says. “There’s been a lot of discussion on each posts.”
Aside from being a point of scientific curiosity, these contaminants also showcase the aesthetic beauty of the microbial world. Some of the club’s founding member’s favorites include these blue colonies with different morphologies submitted by @PseudoNic and this carpet-like colony submitted by @HaleyZubyk.
Contaminants, once cast aside as a nuisance, are now at the center of discussion on microbiology “Science Twitter.” It’s quite possible that these contaminants are previously unidentified species that could also hold promising applications if studied further. After all, Alexander Fleming’s accidental discovery of penicillin came from a contaminant.
