The Unseen Wins (Here Bacteria)

“We try to control microbes, but the unseen world remains victorious.”
Lydia-Marié Joubert, Cell Sciences Imaging Facility, Stanford University, California

“Human Hand Controlling Bacterial Biofilms” by Lydia-Marié Joubert & Francis Hewlett

“Antimicrobial resistance is a hot topic, especially since it has become clear that our efforts to eradicate microorganisms have made them more resilient,” says Lydia-Marié Joubert, an electron microscopy specialist at Stanford University.

A hand covered with Pseudomonas bacteria: it began with a 1.5-meter-high human hand that reaches out of the soil sculpted by British artist Francis Hewlett. Then Lydia-Marié Joubert overlaid micrographs of cultured biofilms of Pseudomonas bacteria, stained with molecular probes to indicate the health of the cells. Those colored green are resistant to antimicrobial treatment — only a rare few are red, indicating that they have been vanquished.

Some of the war within (the gut) – a video: