Health. Care. | An Educational Blog

As winter ends and spring begins to arrive (and stay), many of us will find ourselves elbow-deep in soil, getting our gardens ready for the season. While we are selecting our annuals, clearing out weeds, and picking out our vegetable plants, there is an army of workers already at work in our gardens: Bacteria. Billions and billions in one handful, these microscopic organisms are performing essential actions that enables us to grow a beautiful garden and grow nutritious food. Today we will explore these unseen workers and how, depending on where they are, they can be either life-sustaining or life-threatening.

Today we celebrate the birth of a scientist known as the Father of Microbiology for his role in the use of lenses to observe the microscopic world. Optics and lens-making developed quickly in 16-17th century Europe, allowing research to expand to the universe. But just as lenses could sharpen light from far away, allowing Galileo to see Jupiter's moons, it could also magnify objects right in the laboratory. The microscope was invented by several lens makers at around the same time in the late 1500s and the technology spread throughout Europe. In the 1660s, however, the use of microscopes for intense research grew explosively. Discovery after discovery began to lay the groundwork for modern biology. 

It's Halloween week, so we are exploring one of the spookier microorganisms that can infect us. Today we explore the swimmer bacteria cell, Proteus, also known as the swarmer cell. This bacteria is one of the leading causes of catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), but its ability to swarm makes it a threat to other organs as well.