Manchester DIYBio May Meeting
May’s DIYBio meeting was full of exciting stuff, with the first results of the microbe map, as well as lots of discussion on what we wanted to do next.
Having taken swabs from a variety of bus stops around Manchester at the Swabfest, a large part of the 18th May meeting was spent looking at the agar plates, counting how many microbial colonies had grown and marvelling at the variety of colours and shapes of moulds and bacteria! There were very clear differences between different samples, with some devoid of life and others almost completely covered in bugs.
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Manchester’s Microbes
After 3 days incubation at room temperature, here are the results of #SwabFest 2011.
The colonies have been counted, and now we are waiting to gather the data together and make some sense of it. Come along to the next DIYBIOMCR meeting (15th June) to see what we make of it, or better yet, join the googlegroup and get involved before!
How we got the Go Ahead for the Microbe Map
Unfortunately I couldn’t make it to the planning meeting in April where the details of the Microbe Map were hashed out*. However one question which I’m told was discussed in detail was the ethics of the experiment, and how we should plan the work to make sure we weren’t taking any risks (to ourselves or anyone else) and to avoid potential minefields. An important part of this was getting permission to swab the items that formed part of the map: although the original plan was to sample bank ATMs in the city, it occurred to us that despite the fact these are publically accessible, they actually belong to the banks – who might worry about what the results show. Even if we weren’t specifically going to be drawing any such conclusions, “Bank X has the most germs!” was a headline they would not want to see in the Metro! (more…)
DIYBIO SwabFest Review
This week was the third meeting of the Manchester DIY Bio group – the breeding ground for citizen biology. In previous meetings we had planned a starter project to explore the microbes of Manchester, and now was the time to metaphorically get our hands dirty.
Firstly though, we got to see how literally dirty our hands were with the results of the last meeting’s experiments, where we’d put our hands in agar jelly, and swabbed various surfaces around MadLab. The petri-dishes, which had been stored at room temperature for four days to allow the microbes to grow, were spread across the table and we all examined the cultures growing within. There was quite a range of stuff growing. Jo assured us that everything was harmless (she also, worryingly, kept referring to the microbes as ‘beautiful’ – I guess that’s scientists for you!). Most of them also looked reassuringly benevolent, apart from Asa’s hand-print, which had some kind of spores growing in it which looked decidedly sinister.
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SwabFest the Movie
Hey Swabbers! It was a warmish sunny day on the 4th of May 2011 when the DIYBIOMCR ‘citizen scientists’ went out sampling Manchester.
DIY Bio MCR Swab Fest from Prohyena on Vimeo.
May 18th – DIYbio SwabFest Results
Location: MadLab
Description: Come along to help us analyse the Manchester DIYbio ‘Microbe Map’ data gathered on Wednesday 4th of May, and help us build the Manchester Microbe Map!
Date: 18-05-2012
Start Time: 19:00
End Time: 21:00