ALT #LabWeek may be over but we still owe you one answer! The correct answer to yesterday's anagram is 🥁 Parasitemia! Thanks for participating in this week’s anagrams! #ASMClinMicro #Lab4Life
ALT Let’s close the work week out with a new anagram! IMPERATASIA Unscramble the word and post your answer below! Did you get yesterday’s answer? 🥁 Mucormycetes! #ASMClinMicro #Lab4Life#LabWeek
ALT Post-WWII Japanese scientists investigating a series of intractable dysentery outbreaks showed that co-culturing Shigella strains isolated from outbreak cases changed the drug susceptibility of laboratory strains of Escherichia coli. They were among the first to demonstrate that drug resistance could be shared between species, and that this could happen for more than 1 drug at a time. Their work helped lay the groundwork for understanding plasmid-mediated resistance (nearly a decade before plasmids were visualized), a mechanism that underlies drug resistance in modern “nightmare bacteria” like carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales (or CRE).
ALT Let’s close the work week out with a new anagram! CYTOMECUREM Unscramble the word and post your answer below! Did you get yesterday’s answer? 🥁Diphtheroid! #ASMClinMicro #Lab4Life #LabWeek
ALT Sniffing Out Tuberculosis Did you know that African giant pouched rats (Cricetomys gambianus) can be trained to smell tuberculosis? These rodents have been used in Tanzania and Ethiopia to successfully and quickly detect Mycobacterium tuberculosis in patient sputum samples. How do they do it? The rats pick up on distinct volatile organic compounds (VOCs) produced by the bacterium.
ALT Are you ready for an afternoon anagram? TIHDEROPHID Unscramble the word and post your answer below! Did you get yesterday’s answer? 🥁Carbapenemase! #ASMClinMicro #Lab4Life#LabWeek
ALT Microbial Ice Nucleating Proteins Did you know that microbes can help turn water into ice? Pseudomonas syringae produces ice nucleation proteins (INPs), which play an important role in nucleating clouds with ice crystals, leading to precipitation such as rain or snow. Bacterial INPs are even used to help make artificial snow! Scientists have also found that some types of fungi produce INPs. Cool!
ALT Arboviruses The term “arbovirus” is short for arthropod-borne virus. These viruses are transmitted by arthropods like mosquitoes and ticks. Outbreaks caused by this diverse group of pathogens are getting larger and more frequent as climate change, human travel and urbanization have made it easier for disease vectors—and the arboviruses they carry—to spread. Fortunately, our understanding of how arboviruses interact with human and animal populations is also accelerating, thanks to the expansion of genomic sequencing capabilities worldwide.
ALT Time for a break! Take 5 minutes to solve today’s microbiology anagram! ROEANBAE Unscramble the word and post your answer below! Did you get yesterday’s answer? *drum emoji* Pipette! #ASMClinMicro #Lab4Life #LabWeek
ALT Did you know that Alexander Fleming foretold the dangers of misusing penicillin? In his 1945 Nobel Lecture, Fleming stated, "The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the shops. Then there is the danger that the ignorant man may easily underdose himself and by exposing his microbes to non-lethal quantities of the drug make them resistant." His prophetic words resonate today, 81 years later, as antimicrobial resistance represents a persistent global public health threat.
ALT Time for your daily dose of microbiology anagram! Can you get today’s anagram? TETPPIE Unscramble the word and post your answer below! Did you get yesterday’s answer? *drum emoji* Nocardia! #ASMClinMicro #Lab4Life#LabWeek