Outreach
Gut Wars!
We created a simple online computer game with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History to illustrate how bacteria compete in the gut. We find it is engaging for children and adults alike for outreach and teaching. Do use Gut Wars in your own activities if you like. Making the game led us to hypothesise that bacteria can block incoming attacks from other bacteria using slimy polymers i.e. ‘Slimy’ vs ‘Stabby’. We went on to show that this really occurs! Read more here:
Granato E, Smith WPJ, Foster KR 2023. Collective protection against the type VI secretion system in bacteria. ISME journal, 0.1038/s41396-023-01401-4
Oxford Sparks Animation
Oxford sparks made a beautiful animation about our microbial ecology work and, in particular, the potential to use microbial communities as model systems to understand ecology more generally.
Glastonbury
in collaboration with Fiona Powrie’s group, we attended Glastonbury with a stall on the human microbiome.
