We were thrilled to be part of the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition this year (free family event on 7th July. We travelled down to London with a car load of agar plates, swabs and microscopes. We had a prime spot in the reception area of the beautiful Royal Society building, who’s doors opened promptly at 10 am with a flood of science-hungry families!
The five of us were thrilled to have such a buzz of excitement around the activity. Everyone wanted the chance to swab their bodies and create their own, very personal artworks. They were just as eager to see who had cleaned their teeth well that morning! We prepared 100s of slides from visitors mouth swabs that we stained with methylene blue to show thousands-millions of bacteria clustered around their cheek cells under the microscope.
It was really nice to see Peter Cotgreave and Ruth Paget, from The Microbiology Society, who have supported so much of our work. Our team were kept busy from 10am – 6pm when we finally shut up shop after 570 bioselfies! We took them back up to Salford for incubation. One of our expert microbiology technicians Nicky Morgan has been working hard recording and uploading them and we can’t wait to see the results!
Setting up 
Talking about oral microbial diversity 
Summer Science Exhibition
The Team: Dr Chloe James, Dr Ian Goodhead, Gavin Ackers-Johnson, Lizzie Barber, Holly McGlynn. A special thanks to Dr Nicky Morgan for prep and processing.
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