AskScience AMA Series: We're microbiologists and artists who recently competed in (and won!) the American Society for Microbiology's Agar Art Contest. AUA! | AskScience Blog

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Thursday, December 23, 2021

AskScience AMA Series: We're microbiologists and artists who recently competed in (and won!) the American Society for Microbiology's Agar Art Contest. AUA!

AskScience AMA Series: We're microbiologists and artists who recently competed in (and won!) the American Society for Microbiology's Agar Art Contest. AUA!


AskScience AMA Series: We're microbiologists and artists who recently competed in (and won!) the American Society for Microbiology's Agar Art Contest. AUA!

Posted: 23 Dec 2021 05:01 AM PST

Interested in how science and art overlap? So are we! We are scientists and artists who use a variety of artistic media to create works of art that showcase microbiology in our world. Some of us use combinations of microbes "painted" on nutritional agar; others use more traditional artistic platforms like drawings and photography to express our ideas. What we have in common (other than our love of microbiology and art) is that we are all winners of the American Society for Microbiology's 2021 Agar Art Contest!

The American Society for Microbiology has organized this annual contest since 2015, inviting scientists, artists, and anyone with an interest in the intersection of science and art, to create and submit their microbial artwork. This is a rugged competition: each year there are hundreds of entries from around the world that are narrowed down through two rounds of expert judging to identify the winners.

Join us today for a discussion about our individual artistic inspirations and creative processes. We'll answer your questions about how to turn microbes (and microbial ideas and concepts) into works of art. We'll be jumping on from 2 - 4 PM ET (7 PM - 9 PM UTC). Ask us anything!

With us today are:

  • Dr. Sarah Adkins-Jablonsky, Ph.D. (u/EvolvedtoHibernate)- Medical student, Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine
  • Sonja Borndörfer (u/Sonja-1008)- Student, University of Applied Sciences Weihenstephan-Triesdorf
  • Mireya Duran (u/tigerlily0423)- Medical Laboratory Scientist, Texas Health (Dallas)
  • Dr. Judy Nguyen, Ph.D. (u/judynwin)- Administrator, Monarch Butterfly Friends Hawaii
  • Natascha Varona (u/NataschaVarona)- Ph.D. Student, University of Miami

Links:

submitted by /u/AskScienceModerator
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How did wild sheep live a lifetime without the possibility to have their wool cut?

Posted: 23 Dec 2021 09:37 AM PST

How are people who test positive with an at home rapid test accounted for in totals and R0 figures?

Posted: 23 Dec 2021 09:00 AM PST

I know of dozens of people who tested positive in the last week (Colorado) and all of them with an at home test. Case numbers are spiking like crazy in surrounding counties, but I have to imagine with how many people are discovering they're infected outside the medical system it has to be significantly worse than reported. Do statisticians attempt to estimate the number of people in this scenario? Or is every number you see from total cases to R0 drastically undervalued?

submitted by /u/White_Ranger33
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Do we know what percentage of Covid invections come from inhalation vs surface contact?

Posted: 23 Dec 2021 12:46 PM PST

The UK government's Covid slogan is Hands (sanitising) Face (masks) Space (social distancing). Do we actually know how many people are infected from surfaces versus the air?

submitted by /u/Se7enineteen
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The mRNA vaccines use a seemingly roundabout method for creating the spike protein: inject mRNA which is then read by cells which then create the spike protein. Why not cut out the middleman and inject the spike protein directly?

Posted: 22 Dec 2021 09:18 AM PST

Why mRNA vaccine doesn't initiate cytokine attack?

Posted: 23 Dec 2021 04:07 AM PST

If cytokine storm is due to evading lots of pathogens and mRNA vaccine produce lots of spikes, why there isn't cytokine storm after vaccination?

submitted by /u/returnofdinosaurs
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How broadly might Pfizer’s new covid antiviral pill work?

Posted: 22 Dec 2021 04:39 PM PST

I read that Pfizer's new pill, paxlovid, is a protease inhibitor that interferes with viral replication, and that they expect it to work just as well against omicron as it did against previous variants.

Will it work against all potential sars-cov-19 variants? Might it work on other coronavirus? Other types of viruses, like influenza?

submitted by /u/Qwertyyzxcvvv
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What do we know about Long-Covid (i.e. people who haven't had any measurable damage but feel like something is wrong in their body)?

Posted: 22 Dec 2021 06:33 AM PST

Most sites say cats become malnutritioned if fed only meat and never any "cat food". Is this a marketing scam, or how would wild cats have been able to survive in nature?

Posted: 23 Dec 2021 04:45 AM PST

Been reading about how one would provide a full nutritious plate to a cat without using super processed "cat food"s, and this always strikes me as weird (seeing as cats are obligate carnivores).

submitted by /u/DarkEvilHedgehog
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Are covid reinfections generally less severe?

Posted: 23 Dec 2021 11:50 AM PST

Is getting covid once similar to the vaccine, as in you might get covid again but it's a lot less likely to be a bad case where you are hospitalized/die? Or does it not really change anything and the reinfection is just as likely to be bad as the first time?

Thank you.

submitted by /u/lyb770
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How does the immune system attack HIV?

Posted: 23 Dec 2021 06:51 AM PST

My question concerns the untreated HIV infection. As far as I know it works like that: In the acute phase, viral load is at hundreds of thousands or millions of virus copies per ml of blood. After a couple of weeks, antibodies are produced. Then, viral load decreases rapidly and stabilizes at around 10k to 30k copies. I assumed that this decrease is caused by antibodies. Now I read in a German article, that only few people develop neutralizing antibodies, most only produce antibodies that can detect but not block HIV. Does anyone know whether that is correct? And if so, why does the viral load drop after the acute phase? Is something else attacking the virus? Many thanks in advance!

submitted by /u/duckinatubber
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What does the Pfizer COVID-19 Anti-Viral Pill Do? How does it differ from taking Monoclonal Antibody Treatment in treating COVID-19?

Posted: 22 Dec 2021 12:01 PM PST

is the protein that is coded by the covid vaccine exactly the same as the one found on the virus?

Posted: 23 Dec 2021 07:21 AM PST

What was the vital force in vital force theory of organic compounds ?

Posted: 23 Dec 2021 06:47 AM PST

Why did the space shuttle have to do the 'roll maneuver?'

Posted: 22 Dec 2021 04:50 AM PST

After takeoff the space shuttle always performed a roll maneuver. Why couldn't it be oriented on the pad to avoid having to make such an adjustment?

submitted by /u/zonayork
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Is there a fundamental difference between brain signals decoding thoughts and signals decoding motions?

Posted: 23 Dec 2021 01:56 AM PST

I just saw an Elon Musk interview where he explained that at Neuralink they're essentially tapping into an animal's brain signal for motion and convert it to a digital signal. Is this in theory (being a big word) also possible with thoughts?

submitted by /u/Peerroxx
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Why was the hole in the ozone layer over the south pole?

Posted: 23 Dec 2021 04:52 AM PST

I think I get why how CFCs reduced ozone, however I don't see what mechanism made it so that this manifested as a localised hole over the south pole. Why north the north pole? Why a hole and not a general reduction everywhere/where use was highest?

submitted by /u/Bluy98888
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Do People who fast regularly have lower risk of diabetes ?

Posted: 23 Dec 2021 02:04 AM PST

People who fast regularly like religious people have a lower risk of being diabetic, is that true?

Being at a high risk of diabetes I'm trying to avoid as much risks as I can and i dont mind fasting but my mom wanted to know more about it so can someone please let me know..

Thank you

submitted by /u/_notkk_
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What advantages does the U.S. Army's new ferritin nanoparticle vaccine have over existing mRNA vaccines?

Posted: 22 Dec 2021 07:11 PM PST

In terms of its physical shape, how is COVID-19 different from other coronaviruses?

Posted: 22 Dec 2021 01:34 PM PST

COVID-19 is only one virus in the coronavirus family. I know that most of the viruses in this family are fairly harmless and are little more than the common cold, but it also includes more serious viruses like SARS and MERS. I am curious about how COVID-19 differs from other coronaviruses in terms of is physical makeup (as we can see in this illustration). One thing I hear that makes COVID-19 dangerous is the spike proteins on its surface. Do other coronaviruses not have spike proteins? If they do, why are the spikes on COVID-19 more dangerous?

submitted by /u/crono09
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Why does snow crunch?

Posted: 22 Dec 2021 08:36 PM PST

Do dyslexic people always read the word as the same rearranged word or it differs everytime they read it. If so why?

Posted: 22 Dec 2021 08:13 PM PST

Let's say a dyslexic person reads "stay" as "ytsa", will the person read it again as "ytsa" or some other rearrangement?

submitted by /u/__gg_
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Is there any limit to message length or the number of items coded into an mRNA vaccine?

Posted: 23 Dec 2021 03:59 AM PST

I was thinking about how the mRNA vaccines of this year code for a spike protein that is being replaced out in the wild by the omicron variant. Is it possible to write an mRNA vaccine that codes for BOTH the alpha and omicron spike proteins? Is it possible to add delta in too? Could an mRNA vaccine code for Covid and also flu? Is there any limit to the amount of viral information you could put in a vaccine? What are the technical limitations to mRNA vaccines and message length?

submitted by /u/SwagarTheHorrible
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Does hypothalamic inflammation always happen in response to eating food? Is it what produces satiety, esp in response to eating saturated fats?

Posted: 22 Dec 2021 11:28 PM PST

Inspired by this quote from rapamycin.news:

Richard Miller suggested that when you take these canagliflozin results together with the acarbose results, you're led to the inference that something about aging in the male mice depends a lot on staying away from really high glucose levels. However, whether that means that high glucose in the males triggers a circuit in the hypothalamus, which is bad for you or something, is just a hypothesis. It may be that it has to do with the susceptibility of the hypothalamus to inflammatory change differentially in males than in females. And this nebulous change has an impact on the cancer, or an impact on anti-cancer defenses or something

submitted by /u/inquilinekea
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