WILTIMS #191: Ready for me to pick your nose?

Does that say sheep blood? Yes, yes it does.

Today we finally had a "wet" lab in microbiology, wherein we cultured actual bacteria on various media. We also learned (or relearned) how to do a Gram-stain and tried to use this technique to identify bacteria swabbed from our own throats and noses. There were definitely things there, but nobody had any idea what they were. Tomorrow, we'll get to see the results of the cultures we grew overnight. Now we're all hoping we aren't the ones carrying the most bacteria or one of the 2-3 individuals in each lab predicted to be carrying slightly scarier infections like S. aureus.

TIL: Lyme disease is only found in the northern hemisphere and then over 80% are in the New England and the mid-atlantic states. This bacterium is spread by tick bites but humans are only an incidental host, with the primary host being different depending on the species of tick. Part of the reason for the regional variation in incidence is that there are different dominant species of tick outside of the highly affected states.

Cases of Lyme disease by county, 2012

One of my microbiology professors knows very little US or world geography. Can you spot Virginia?