• Question: What is it the things you work with that glows because it looks like glowing worms.

    Asked by 365arth23 to Daniel on 8 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Daniel Morse

      Daniel Morse answered on 8 Mar 2017:


      Haha, they do look like glowing worms, you’re right!

      They are fluorescently stained Candida (the fungus I work with). They are magnified about 400 times, so you can imaging how small they are.

      To get this image, I grew the biofilms on plastic discs, then added two stains – a green stain that only stains Candida, and a red one that only stains bacteria. This way I can see what kind of shape the Candida are (and this is important because if they are circular, they are considered non-pathogenic, or non-harmful, but if they are stretched, they are more pathogenic!).

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