Hi all,
I was looking at these videos on youtube where they show how to sample bacteria from phones or other sources. here’s an example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siHopHBdW2c
I was wondering if any of you have been doing any sampling and growing of bacteria from the body in a self-organised bioLab and what kind of safety measures did you take.
I talked with a microbiologist (with no background in DIY practices) and she told me it’s pretty dangerous even if you keep the petri dish sealed and she would not recommend it as you don’t know what you are growing. Maybe here there are different opinions or examples to share.
thanks a lot in advance for any suggestion, documentation, comment, safety alert you can share!
Zoe
For growing it. best at kinda elevated room temperatures. 25-30° degree (yes it’s summer!), no incubator needed. also always safer to NOT grow stuff at body temp. 37°.
generally having the petri dishes or whatever containers you use, closed is a good idea, and you can cook / kill them in a steam cooker for disposal. as it’s kinda an optimal growth conditions for bacterias and molds, some people with immune deficiancies should not open and lick and inhale the dishes after it’s been growing for a few das. generally throw them away after 3-4 days. (same counts for that molded ove pizza slice you lefrt under the sofa!).
to make agar plates for putting whole phones we used some cheap containers (like tupperware) that had a more rectangular shape.
Mbe a little sidenote…
such bacterial growth plates have NOTHING and absolutely NOTHING to do with viral infections or it’s spreading. nor do they say anything about pathogens…
all they say is that there are a lot of little buggers around on your had and your phone.
so do some tests on a normal phone and one that you just cleaned.
Hi Marc,
thanks for feedback and tips.
Ok, the main message i get also from you is that it’s recommended not to grow stuff at body temp, because we don’t know what we are growing and we could be multiplying risky stuff especially for people with immune deficiencies.
And there’s not a protocol to do it in a safe way in a citizen science biolab even if the petri dishes are sealed.
Genau genau,
there is NO reason to grow stuff at 37°…
but again, on such potato medium you won’t grow bad too much stuff .
unlike if you grow stuff on human blood or other crap.
“there is NO reason to grow stuff at 37°…”
It depends on what you want to explore. Our idea was to first start with simple exercises like with the phone and later, when more confident, explore the bacteria diversity in vaginal mucus and how it changes during the cycle or changing diet (more fermented food etc).
I’m trying to understand which level of safety measures different kinds of explorations need.
Hi Lula,
yes, we’ve been doing some experiments in culturing below 37° with samples from some surfaces. I also built a glove box to open up in a safer way some of the weirdest results.
More than cleanliness we were addressing the safety of the people around. When we run workshops we don’t know who’s attending and there could be people with fragile immune system or other issues and not be aware of it.
Really happy you enjoy conversation
I’m based in Montpellier, southern France. I often hang out our local hackerspace (LeBib) which also hosts a DIY bio lab, they mostly do stuff with fungi and bacteria, but I’d be more interested in the kind of work you’re doing:)
Indeed, there are risks to exploring the bacterial world. Many people have known human pathogens as a part of their ‘normal’ flora, and even experiments about environmental ‘swarming’ bacteria (normally quite innocuous) can lead to finding potential human pathogens. (that happened the first time we tried the experiment! we do some microscopy and especially 16S pcr/seq for the colony identification…) However, if you learn and use sterile techniques and never grow cultures further than on the original plates, usually risk can be minimised. Indeed there are standard protocols to carefully do work, even after growth at 37oC, which makes most sense if you want to, for instance, examine your microbiome. When spores are possible, it is indeed best not to open your plates (we seal with parafilm) unless they are in a real laminar air flow hood (or equivalent). However, decontam with bleach is less messy in our hands, and was ok’d during our BAFU P1 inspection, than using steam. We put about 3ml of bleach in the plate, let it sit about 5min, reseal and trash. It all gets burnt up, in the end… (We reserve our pressure cooker for sterilising media for use, not for old cultures, at Hackuarium.) Common sense, gloves, lab coats, and being careful with the bleach is of course important. Having academic partnerships (for instance we have friends still in the department of fundamental microbio at the unil) is also great, if there is special waste to consider (that broken mercury thermometer no one told us about, for instance, back in our old industrial space!)… I am glad to answer specific questions. Where are you? Take care!
