Megan Dymond
I am a second year undergraduate student studying Microbiology at the University of Reading. I am particularly interested in antimicrobial resistance. I enjoy going horse riding in my spare time.
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Megan Dymond made a comment
Hello everyone, and welcome to the course. I'm in my final year of microbiology at the University of Reading. I'm interested in medical microbiology, especially antibiotic and antimicrobial research. I'm really looking forward to answering any questions between March 1st and March 21st, hearing your opinions and getting to discuss various topics both from this...
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Megan Dymond replied to Guus Löhlefink
Hi Guus, I'm glad you enjoyed the course, and thank you for all your insightful comments and web links. They've been really interesting to read, and have even expanded my knowledge.
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Megan Dymond replied to Simon Ward
Hi Simon, great question. Other researchers have also questioned whether the bacteria in probiotics can survive once ingested. Various results have been found, with different species of bacteria surviving better than others. I think the most common consensus is that at the very least probiotics do us no harm, the question that remains is how much good they do....
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Megan Dymond replied to Amy R
Hi Amy, great answer. And the bacteria that remained after half the course would very likely be the ones that contained the antibiotic resistance genes. So once they spread, a greater percentage of the bacteria would contain resistance genes than before the person started the course.
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Megan Dymond replied to Dayana Ferreira
Hi Dayana, E. coli is a relatively safe bacteria, which is why it's used so often in the lab. Y. pestis is spread via a bite directly introducing it into the human bloodstream. By inserting the system into E. coli and taking away the host vectors (fleas), E. coli and the Y. pestis system has no way of infecting the researchers. However, during experiments, the...
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Megan Dymond replied to James Bussingham
Hi James, I also really enjoyed the evolutionary processes module and liked how much it linked with microbiology.
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Hi Abi, that's the question that many scientists have tried and failed to answer over the years! The hardest part is that there aren't any fossils of viruses, so it's only possible to broadly estimate when viruses first existed. It tends to be a matter of opinion which evolved first. I like the theory that cells evolved alongside viruses and have always been...
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Hi Michael, I'm not sure if you came across a recent experiment done by the International Space Station, where they exposed a bacteria called Deinococcus radiodurans to space. This summer, 3 years after the sample was first put in space, they brought the sample back into the space station and found that it had survived! Here's the link to the article where...
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Megan Dymond replied to Leen B.
Hi Leen, yes it would be great to have access to the Russian research. However, with how high profile the antibiotic resistance crisis is, there has been an increase in research into using phages as an alternative. Hopefully the research is successful.
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Hi Leen, yes you are correct that yeasts become diploid is stressful times. This enables them to form spores, which have the ability to survive extreme conditions for extended periods of time.
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Megan Dymond replied to sepho kgt
Hi Sepho, the tree of life is divided into 2 main categories; prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Both archaea and bacteria belong to the prokaryotic branch. Archaea are similar to bacteria in size, however their organisation is closer to eukaryotes. Which is why it's thought that they are a kind of intermediate. Although archaea don't have a nucleus like eukaryotic...
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Megan Dymond replied to Woodie Rowe
Hi Woodie, an interesting answer. Certainly viruses are like many symbionts and parasites in that they can't survive without their host. Even mitochondria, who were once able to survive in the environment, can no longer survive without being inside a eukaryotic cell. One of the longest debates within the microbiology community is whether viruses should be...
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Hi Bibi, a great question. Quite a lot of information is still unknown about archaea. including the identification of virulence genes or factors. Once discovered these genes would provide more information about what type of organism the archaea caused disease in and how. Archaea certainly have the means and opportunity to cause disease, it's just that what...
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Hi Zoe, don't worry about joining late, the course will still be open for 2 more weeks, so hopefully there's plenty of time for you to look at everything.
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Hi Simon, unlike protists, bacteria don't merge when they form spores. The bacterial endospore is made by one bacteria and contains the bacterial DNA, ribosomes and some other key nutrients. Like protists, these endospores are thought to form under stress conditions, like low nutrients, and have the ability to survive extreme conditions for an extended period...
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Hi Adam, interesting question. It may be because a lot of the initial evolution happened in single-celled, or very small multi-celled organisms. Therefore the time it took for the organisms to produce offspring was very small, it could have even been as short as 10 minutes! This would mean that evolution between generations would be very rapid. There is also...
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Megan Dymond replied to Simon Ward
Hi Simon, with eukaryotic cells the phrase 'strength in numbers' is very appropriate. Working collectively makes it easier for cells to survive. For example, it's easier and quicker when cells move in a group towards nutrients than individually. Eukaryotic organisms are the pinnacle of cells working together to survive as a multicellular organism. There are...
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Megan Dymond replied to Michael Reynolds
Hi Michael, I'm really glad you are enjoying the course. If you have any questions, please feel free to post them in the discussion here.
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Hi Gabriella, good question. Organisms in the Protist group tend to be placed into that group because they don't fit into any other category. The specific reason why is unique to each species and can be very varied. For example, kelp is a multi-cellular protist, that can grow to be over 100 meters long. However, unlike other multicellular organisms, all the...
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Megan Dymond made a comment
Hi everyone, welcome to the course. I'm in my final year of Microbiology at the University of Reading. I'm interested in medical microbiology, especially antibiotics and antimicrobial research. I'm really looking forward to hearing different opinions and getting to discuss various topics both from this course and beyond.
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Hi Mohamed, a very interesting question. It may be in some countries they decided to have a very strict lockdown, alongside extensive testing, as well as track and trace. This enabled those countries (like South Korea) to have a better control of the virus. It is very hard to say at the moment if a country is completely free of covid19, however there are...
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Hi Sarah, the cell wall of bacterium will retain the crystal violet dye, which stains them. Iodine is used after crystal violet as it can form crystalline crystal violet-iodine complexes. These complexes help the dye to remain in the cell wall and not be easily removed by the rest of the Gram staining method. You are correct in thinking that ethanol is not...
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Megan Dymond replied to Peter Grover
Hi Peter, I believe the biggest caution with GM crops is that the long term effects are not known. It may be in 10 years we discover that growing GM crops destroys fertile land, or irreversibly changes the ecosystem in the environment it's grown in. Or that there is some unknown effect to human health. But there is no way to know the answers to these questions...
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Hi Larisa, we don't use gloves in the labs as it is a risk to have them near the Bunsen burners. In addition, the bacteria used in this demonstration are not category 3 or 4 therefore, as long as the demonstrators don't have cuts or open wounds on their hands, then there isn't a health and safety issue. If the bacteria were of a higher risk category, more...
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Megan Dymond replied to Osla C
Hi Osla, whilst it would be hard to know what the impact on humans would be, but there have been some experiments done on mice that are raised in entirely sterile conditions, and there were differences observed in their behaviour, as well as their growth and development. Here's a link to a Nature article that covers a bit about the history of germ-free...
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Megan Dymond replied to Mark Bretherton
Hi Mark, yes the CRISPR technique was originally found in bacteria and then adapted for human use. It is thought that CRISPR is part of the bacteria's immune system that protects the bacteria from being infected again by the same baceriophage.
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Megan Dymond replied to Paige h
Hi Paige, glad you found this interesting. Below is a link to Professor Simon Andrews' profile on the university website. If you scroll down to publications then it lists all of his papers from 2003 to now. I believe he has published two papers this year, including one on iron. https://www.reading.ac.uk/biologicalsciences/about/staff/s-c-andrews.aspx
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Megan Dymond replied to Leah Grobler
Hi Leah, that's a great question. It is very hard to know exactly how LUCA formed. The oldest fossils on Earth are stromatolites, which are layers of sediments that were laid down by microbes, these fossils are thought to be around 3.7 billion years old. It is hard to tell from just these fossils what kind of microbes would have made them. As LUCA is thought...
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Hi Peter, although I agree that anti-vaxxers haven't made a positive contribution towards understanding microbiology, they have, unintentionally, provided proof that vaccination does work. When you compare the uptake of vaccinations to the number of cases, there is a direct link between an increase in cases and fewer children being vaccinated. If anything,...
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Megan Dymond replied to [Learner left FutureLearn]
Hi Helen, you are correct in thinking that in winter we get less vitamin D, this is because our main source of vitamin D is from the sun, so due to less time spent outdoors and shorter days, we naturally get a reduced vitamin D uptake. Vitamin D is vital for our immune system to function properly, so with less vitamin D our immune system becomes compromised....
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Hi Paula, many of the structures of bacteria can be seen using electron microscopes. This includes the flagella and fimbriae as well as some internal structures like the ribosomes and chromosomal DNA. As viruses are much smaller they are harder to get observe under electron microscopy, but it is still possible to see the surface proteins. I found this website...
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Megan Dymond replied to Paula Ferris
Hi Paula, you're right, the content on this page does not apply to viruses. This page covers what microbes need to replicate successfully, and because viruses can't replicate on their own they don't need a "menu". An explanation for why covid may be worse in the winter is that it would also coincide with the flu season, so people's immune systems will have to...
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Megan Dymond replied to Nancy Cabo
Hi Nancy, welcome to the course. In general, when an antiviral is used it stops one of the steps in infection. This could be preventing the virus from binding to the host cell. This then prevents the virus from replicating, and also gives our immune system time to produce an effective response to the virus to hopefully destroy it.
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Megan Dymond replied to Jo Alex Sousa Gomes
Hi Jo, welcome back to the course. I hope this time you get to cover more of the content. Most of the content is available for download, so you can always save some of the information to come back to at a later date. Also, please feel free to ask us any questions you have.
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Hi Nicklaus, great answer. You are indeed right that we are very focused on microbes that influence humans. There are so many species that have had very little research done on them, and yet microbes like Penicillium notatum have been extensively studied because they were found to produce Penicillin. We have Cyanobacteria to thank for creating the oxygen rich...
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Hi Sylvia, during the hijacking the virus aims to stop human mRNA-protein synthesis. This means that the only RNA available for host machinery is viral, so the host's machinery shifts to translating viral mRNA. The specific mechanism that prevents host DNA replication changes with and even within each viral family. In general the structures that are targeted...
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Megan Dymond replied to Emily Burke
Hi Emily. Welcome to the course and I hope it helps with your application to Universities. Please ask as many questions as you like in the comment sections, I will answer as many as I can.
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Megan Dymond made a comment
Hi everyone, welcome to the course. I'm an undergraduate student studying Microbiology at the University of Reading. I'm interested in medical microbiology, especially antibiotics and antimicrobial research. I'm really looking forward to hearing different opinions and getting to discuss various topics both from this course and beyond.
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It is possible to become a lab tech, however there may not be much career progression available, as may jobs do require a degree nowadays.
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Megan Dymond replied to Jim Muir
The bacillus cerillus spores are found in very small quantities, so when rice is cooked and eaten straight away the spores don't have time to germinate and replicate. This keeps their numbers very low, so it is easy for the immune system to contain them should they survive the small intestine. The numbers also aren't high enough to produce enough toxins to...
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Megan Dymond replied to Jutta We
Yes I agree that there are many side effects of vaccines. With the polio vaccine that you are referring too, it's called the live attenuated vaccine. It causes paralytic polio in around 1 in 4 million cases, however wild type polio virus (i.e. not vaccine derived) can cause paralytic polio in 1 in 100 cases. The WHO decided that in areas where polio is still...
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Hi Maria, yes it definitely does. With every course of antibiotics prescribed there is a risk the bacteria developing or passing on antibiotic resistance. The more courses of antibiotics that are prescribed the greater the risk. Overuse would also mean that people who wouldn't benefit from a course of antibiotics are being prescribed them. Of course they...
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Megan Dymond replied to maddie reynolds
yes exactly right, and by killing off the vulnerable bacteria, it makes it easier for those with the antibiotic resistance gene to spread, as they have less competition for resources.
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Megan Dymond replied to Jutta We
Yes exactly, and if a course of antibiotics have to be taken then try and also add probiotics like actimel and kefir into your diet at the same time.
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Megan Dymond replied to Justine Budenz
@JustineBudenz although our own immune system also doesn't have conscious process that it goes through when mounting a defense against a pathogen. In a sense, our adaptive immune system works in a similar way to bacterial evolution in that depends on random chances that make it more specific to a particular pathogen.
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Megan Dymond replied to Kai-Lei Samchuck
Hi Kai-Lei, I think that there are very good arguments for both sides, and it would be easy to argue both ways. As long as the virus can be properly contained, only removed from storage in extreme cases and the institution holding it can be trusted to keep the virus secure, then I think there is a valid reason for not destroying these viruses. However, I don't...
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Megan Dymond replied to Jutta We
Hi Jutta, by 'whole system in E.coli' it means that they get E.coli to act like Y.pestis. This is done by taking genes of interest from Y.pestis and inserting them into E.coli. This way the E.coli will react the same as Y.pestis during the experiments, but will not be able to infect and cause disease in the human immune system in the same way that Y.pestis does.
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Megan Dymond replied to elaine thompson
@elainethompson it could also be that as humans remove more and more microbes from their environment, our immune systems become more sensitive and less able to deal with microbes. For example, when humans still lived with their livestock in their house, they didn't really have any of the autoimmune diseases that we have today, e.g. some people nowadays would...
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Hi Hannah, some of the symptoms caused by pathogens are in fact our own immune system reacting to the infection, this would include coughing and sneezing. Of course without transmission the pathogen would struggle to persist. Pathogens have probably evolved to survive in the outside environment too. So, although it may be a coincidence that sneezing and...
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Megan Dymond replied to James Turnbull
There are a few reasons why bats have carried many pathogens that have later jumped to humans. The first is that bats like to live in groups, so pathogens are passed quickly from bat to bat. In addition, these pathogens very rarely cause severe consequences for the bat. It is thought that this has something to do with the high metabolism required for the bat...
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Megan Dymond replied to Holly Curtis
Hi Holly, I hope you enjoy the course.
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Megan Dymond replied to Hannah C
Hi Hannah, I contain multitudes was on my recommended reading list that I read starting uni. I really enjoyed that book too. Ed Yong does a really good job of including enough science without it becoming like a textbook. A Planet of Viruses by Carl Zimmer was also recommended if you're looking for your next book to read!
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Megan Dymond replied to Sharon Bostock
Hi Sharon, welcome to the course. It's fine that you've joined at this point, and the course should stay open to you for an extra 2 weeks after week 3 officially finishes, so there should be plenty of time for you to cover everything included in the course.
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Hi Samuel, good question. In this formula, the dilution refers to the decrease of the concentration of viral particles in the different solutions. Dilution factor is used to describe the dilution that has taken place. Dilution factor is a ratio between the initial dilution and the final dilution. I hope this helps.
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Hi James, I can try and answer your questions, although at the moment new information about Covid19 is constantly being released so I'm not sure how long my answer will be considered to be accurate. It is though that Covid19 can only survive for a few hours in the air, whereas on solid surfaces it can survive for up to 48 hours. Factors that can affect the...
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Hi David, a very good question there. At the moment nothing is known for sure, but in the past vaccines have been developed and have proven to be successful. I think that scientists are trying to find a solution to the current pandemic, and some are choosing to develop a vaccine as it has worked previously. I watched an interview of Professor Sarah Needs, who...
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yes prebiotics and probiotics are very useful when studying treatments and conditions, even ones that don't immediately seem to be linked to the microbiota. For example, there was a study conducted where patients with autism were given probiotics to see if it helped to change the constituents of their gut microbiota. A more 'normal' microbiota was theorized to...
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Hi Jim, there are some bacteria that are very difficult to Gram stain, which does imply that some bacteria are neither Gram negative or positive. In cases where the bacteria are hard to Gram stain, the bacteria are classified based on their other characteristics. For example Ricketsiaceae are classified as Gram-negative, despite the fact that the bacteria are...
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Hi Karen, although trees don't have an a immune system that is comparable to ours, they do possess certain structural and chemical defenses. One of the main systems is the trees bark. Much like our skin, it forms a protective layer around the trees itself and prevents some bacteria from entering the trees itself. The leaves also have a waxy cuticle which works...
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Hi Maureen, that is a very interesting article. I also find extremophiles very fascinating organisms that humans can learn a lot from. They could even help us learn how to better survive the conditions in space.
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Hi Georgia, in some protists the two nuclei carry out completely different functions within the organism. For example in the protist Paramecium the two nuclei are called the macronucleus and the micronucleus. The micronucleus is required for sexual reproduction. The macronucleus is in charge of asexual reproduction and all the other biological processes.
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Good thinking, it's estimated that less than 1% of bacteria are actually pathogenic. And some of those can only infect a human when their immune system is compromised. Many bacteria are in fact helpful to a huge variety of different species. For example bacteria in our gut provide enzymes that help us digest our food. Alternatively, in some species that have...
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Good answer, yes there are some microbes that cause opportunistic infections. These infections are normally found in people who are immunocompromised. There are also pathogens that can't infect humans, but infect other living organisms including other mammals.
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Megan Dymond replied to elaine thompson
Hi Elaine, good question.
Viruses' genetic code changes quite quickly due to completely random mutations within the viral DNA/RNA. Mutations can arise without the need for transcription. Mutations can be the result of damage done to the genetic code of the virus, and the mutation rate can vary. Only a few of the mutations will result in a beneficial outcome... -
Hi Elaine, I saw that documentary too. I found the animations incredible and thought that it did a really good job of explaining the concepts in a way that made it accessible to a lot of people.
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Megan Dymond made a comment
Hi, I'm an undergraduate student studying Microbiology at the University of Reading. I'm interested in medical microbiology, especially antibiotics and antimicrobial research. I'm really looking forward to hearing different opinions and getting to discuss the topics in this course.
