Cabrillo College lab technician’s microbial hand print photo goes viral
A Cabrillo College Lab Technician’sgoal was onlyto show thepervasiveness of microbes in our daily lives. Yetthe photo ofTasha Sturm’s 8-year-old son’shand print ina Petri dish after he played outside with his dogexploded over the Internet over the pastfew days.
The colorful microbial imprint of her son’s hand developed after Sturm incubated the dish filled with tryptic soy agarat body temperature for 48 hours and then stored it at room temperature for three additional days.
This was not anything new, she claimed she had been doing this to her kids for years to demonstrate microbes are everywhere to her students at Cabrillo College in Aptos.
Late last week she posted images of the hand to Microbe World, a site she regularly contributes to, who then posted in on Facebook. Shortly after the image wentviral.
Over the weekend the images exploded on Twitter, Reddit, and Imgur. By Monday, Sturm was receiving image requests from BuzzFeed Science, Yahoo Canada, the Smithsonian Magazine, Norwegian press and even a photo news agency in Rome, Italy.
Articles have also recentlyappeared on Today.com, Medical Daily, and the Huffington Post.
Surprisingly, everything on the plate is pretty much normal, is not harmful and showcases what we encounter every day according to Sturm. However, it is also a good reminder that proper hygiene and washing your hands after using the restroom and before you eat is important she added.
According to Microbe World, which is run by the American Society for Microbiology, there are more microbes on one person’s hand than there are people on the entire planet.
