Former Research Students and Their Success Stories, Part I!

At a small liberal arts institution, I don't have postdoctoral students, technicians, or graduate students.  I lack vast infrastructure or much in the way of grant support (and I am pretty much out of money---gulp!).  Nor do I have much time, with teaching taking up most of my hours on campus (and off, given grading and prep time).  I have very little time to reflect and plan and be creative, though I do my best.

What I am very fortunate to have are wonderful undergraduate students.  On this blog, I would like to write about those students from time to time.  After all, a great career after graduation is certainly a fine "outcome" of student education here in Tacoma! And I have many success stories to share. 

One such success story is the inimitable Franny Gilman, who graduated from the University of Puget Sound in 2010.  Franny worked with myself and my colleague Stacey Weiss on the fairly unusual cloacal microbiota of the Striped Plateau Lizard, Sceloporus virgatus, and we had a publication in the journal Symbiosis as a result.

After graduation here in Tacoma, Franny went on to graduate school in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Montana.  There, she began work with William Holben's group for her PhD research.  Last summer, Franny went to Greenland to study the microbial ecology of that far-flung place.  Here is her story, in her words, and with her photographs.

Microbial contributions and responses to climate change vastly exceed previous expectations and appear to be substantially impacting both climate change rates and ecosystem responses, yet remain poorly understood. This microbial "black box" needs to be exposed and examined to provide more accurate climate models.  

Specifically, my thesis aims to address the microbial community composition and community function observed in permafrost and the correlation to greenhouse gas emissions measured in two different field sites in Greenland.  My thesis research will involve deployment of molecular analyses including deep 16S rRNA sequencing, metagenomic analyses, comparative metatranscriptomics, and quantitative PCR for key enzymes in controlling methane production and carbon and nitrogen cycles.  Using these techniques will help to develop better predictions as to how microbial communities shift in changing environments in the arctic.  

This past summer I was able to work with collaborators from the Center for Permafrost at the University of Copenhagen (http://cenperm.ku.dk/) and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (http://www.geus.dk/geuspage-uk.htm) in both Copenhagen and in Greenland.  

I am now back at my home lab at the University of Montana (http://holben-lab.dbs.umt.edu/).

It kind of makes me a little teary to hear how professionally Franny writes about all the wonderful things she is doing in the lab---and yes, out on the glacial ice!  It's true that I wish I had those resources and wonderful instruments to work with, but I am so very proud of Franny and how much she has learned since leaving my classroom and laboratory.

Here are some photographs from Franny's Summer 2013 adventure in Greenland!

Figure 1. This photo was taken outside of the Arctic Station on Disko Island in Greenland in August (http://arktiskstation.ku.dk/english/).

Figure 2.  After a day of soil sampling, two other graduate students and I head back to the station around 9 at night.  This photo was also taken in August.

Figure 3.  Here I am at the CENPERM snow fence field site in June.  

And that last image fits Franny to a "T"...and is how I always think of her.  One of a kind!

I had asked Franny to get me some souvenirs from Greenland. After all, it is not likely that I shall ever travel there!  And she sent me some interesting things, indeed, for my Wunderkammer or Cabinet of Curiosities!

There exists remarkable lichen on some of the volcanic rock in Greenland.  Check out the piece Franny sent me.

I have also heard that Greenland contains some of the oldest rocks on the planet (including evidence of ancient microbial life), and some are quite unusual.  In particular, I have heard that many minerals in Greenland fluoresce under ultraviolet light. And indeed, one of the rocks Franny sent to me does precisely that!

 Sure, I adore the souvenirs---thank you, ma'am!---but I am far, far more excited to hear of the wonderful and interesting things Franny is doing in graduate school.  I hope to add her PhD thesis to my shelf, along with those of my other former undergraduate research students.  It's a awesome thing to look at while I am grading at my desk, and helps me through tough times.

Watching former students succeed and do wondrous things is the best "thank you" I can ever receive.

This is why I have the job I do, warts and all---to have the privilege of working with students like Franny Gilman.  Franny, you have come a long way from when we first met!  I hope to get you to come back to Tacoma to give a seminar about your work soon.

I'm very proud of you, and thanks again for being in my classes, and working in my laboratory.  

Letting Time Fly and Remembering...

I haven't blogged for a while, sad to say.  It has been a pretty challenging semester, with my 48 "wild" freshmen, teaching "The Unity of Life" (in other words, introductory cell and molecular biology) here at the University of Puget Sound. My students are smart and capable young women and men, and it's my job to get them thinking like biologists, and to become used to the work ethic and philosophy of science courses---and more specifically, prepare them for the kinds of future courses they will encounter in our department. To set the stage, as it were.  Gulp.  

So things have been pretty busy.

At the same time, I couldn't let a particular date pass without comment.  Yes, I am supposed to mostly write about microbiology and education, but since it is my blog, I get to write about personal things from time to time.  A friend and colleague recently wrote to me about my mother, and I realized that I had not mentioned an important date here on this blog.  I edited this essay from a Facebook post I wrote on April 2nd and decided to share it here.

The second of April is my mother's birthday.  Wanda Jean (Burton) Martin passed away on October 7th, 2012, after her long, long battle with ovarian cancer.  She leaves quite a hole in my life, especially for someone who was as humble and understated as she was for as long as  I knew her.  I used to say that my mother was "psychologically Amish" because of her aversion to saying or doing anything that smacked (to her) of anything even remotely related to bragging. Thus, there were many kind acts by my mother that people will only know through family members; she took no credit, ever.

It was very important to my mother that I recognize her birthday, so I continue to do so after her passing.  Below is a photograph from November of 2007 (look at how small my youngest son Zachary appears, and how beautiful my wife!) that is a truly lovely portrait of my mother.  She never smiled very much, and seldom laughed. But how she loved little children!  This is how I like to remember her.

I also wrote on this blog about my mother last year on Mother's Day here.  

My mother taught me that libraries were places to be honored.  She never attended church, nor spoke much about religion to me.  But clearly she felt that libraries were sacred places.  So I came to see them as such, myself.  I well remember my mother introducing me in hushed tones to the "Children's Librarian" in Long Beach at our local library, Mrs. Lorna Kugler.

"My son Mark likes to read, and the books he is assigned in his classes aren't exciting him," my mother told Mrs. Kugler.  Mrs. Kugler took care of that problem, immediately.  We quickly became friends, and it was wonderful to see my mother beam as she drove me to and picked me up from the local library.  A whole new world---a series of worlds---opened up to me.  Growing up is challenging for anyone, but I certainly felt like an outsider more than most.  Fortunately, I had "book friends" who gave great advice from the printed page.

Mrs. Kugler would let me check out anything from the library, so long as I checked with her and discussed my choices.  Thus, I met Melville and Dickens and Jung and Shakespeare.  Huxley and Orwell.  Enough with "Spaceship Under the Apple Tree"!  Mrs. Kugler was the person who suggested Madeleine L'Engle's "The Arm of the Starfish," that linked my burgeoning love of biology to growing up with an exciting tale that also had good lessons.  

My mother encouraged me to read more and deeper---particularly of things that didn't interest her.  I know that she didn't care for science fiction, but she encouraged me to read it.  My mother, my brother Jack, and Mrs. Kugler were my co-conspirators in learning to love reading.  Sure, there were many people who fed my hunger for the written word.  But it was my mother who first fed that flame.

I owe you a lot for that, Mom, and I need to say it often.  You always, always supported my learning.

In this photograph, from Thanksgiving of 2011, my son Zachary reads to my mother.  Oh, how she savored that.

The above photograph was taken during that last Thanksgiving in 2011 before the ovarian cancer finally started to have its way with my mother.  And here, from the same period,  is the last photograph I have of my children and my parents together (well, and with me, too).

  

It's wonderful to see my mother try to smile in this photograph.  My father still strong and hearty.  Zachary "working" his "Gma" as usual.  And Anson the current teenager looking so very young! Just two and a half years ago...  Like the Delmore Schwartz poem reads, "Time is the fire in which we burn," but goes on to also state that "Time is the school in which we learn."

Mom, I miss you.  I hope that you are resting peacefully. I am glad you are no longer in pain.  Ovarian cancer is usually brutal and undignified.  You were inspirational in how long you fought, and maintained your dignity.  Thank you for encouraging me to love books and honor learning.  I like to think that, in the afterlife, you sit and read out loud to small children all day; I know that you loved that the best.  

And wherever you are, I know that there are plenty of books.  I miss you.  And Happy Birthday.

A Story of Robert Heinlein, Science Fiction, Friends, and History...

Once again, it has been too long since I have written an entry on this blog of mine, especially in light of the attention one of my bacterial ice nucleation videos received recently, which I wrote about here.

So because of my tardiness, here is a mid-sized story for this Saturday of our campus' Spring Break, about science fiction, Robert Heinlein, friends, and a bit of history.  I realize this post has not a thing to do with education or microbiology, it would seem at first. Bear with me, please.

However, I do have a "Cabinet of Curiosities" in my campus office with all kinds of unusual items:  several kinds of meteorites, fossils, netsuke carvings, billion year old stromatolites, Zuni fetishes, New Orleans vodoun items, a piece of amber with an ancient insect inside, and similar items over which I marvel.  I like the old German term for such a collection:  a Wunderkammer ("wonder cabinet").  I first became interested in science because of the awesome strangeness to be found there, and am reminded of J.B.S. Haldane's observation that the universe is not stranger than we imagine, but it is stranger than we can imagine.

Which takes me to this particular item, the centerpiece of my collection.

I grew up loving science fiction, and in fact I would argue that Robert Heinlein's "juvenile" novels (which were anything but childish) helped "raise" me toward adulthood as much as my parents did (I was an odd avian of a child for them to raise, truth be told).  One of my best friends---probably my best friend, though I don't see him much anymore, is the physicist and SF author Gregory Benford.  He knew everyone in SF, and I loved hearing his stories.

Though I never met Robert Heinlein while he was alive, he loomed large in my mind; I have read everything he has written (even the, um, uneven pieces of fiction).  I knew I wanted to name any son of mine after him (Robert Anson Heinlein is the author's full name...Anson Robert Quinn Martin is my first born's name); that was how important I found his writing as I staggered unevenly through adolescence.  But I never got a chance to "thank" Heinlein personally for giving my growing up a sense of adventure, color, and some pretty liberating (if more than a little libertarian) life lessons. Heinlein died in 1988, before I got to know Greg Benford well. 

Yes, many people did thank him.  But I wanted to do so, as well.  I mentioned all of this to Greg, and he pointed out at the time that Heinlein's widow, Virginia Heinlein, was still alive and living in a US Navy Retirement Community in Florida.  So I wrote to Ginny, as I was swiftly told to address her, and she wrote back. Eventually, we became e-mail correspondents.  Virginia Heinlein had a most unusual life, even before she met Robert Heinlein.

In her 80s, Ginny remained the superwoman that Heinlein had 
written about in fiction---every time there is a red-headed "does it all" polymath kind of woman in Heinlein's later fiction...well, those characters were clearly inspired by Ginny. She spent a good deal of time sharing interesting stories with me, and I learned a lot about "the story behind the stories."  I learned about how she and Heinlein sweated over calculating Hohman orbits of spaceships traveling between planets (with slide rules!) in "Space Cadet," and how Ginny had actually named the famous alien in "The Star Beast" "Lummox."

I could never call her late husband "Robert" as she did in conversation; to me he was always "Mr. Heinlein."  And though she insisted I call her "Ginny," I kind of wanted to salute each time I did.  A truly remarkable woman, and much missed.

Because Heinlein was so important to me, growing up, my lovely and brilliant wife Jenny Quinn tried to get me a handwritten or signed letter by the author, on eBay.  When I told Ginny about it, she became uncharacteristically irritable.  "What a waste of money," she exclaimed.  She was quite crusty and direct with me about it, insisting that Jenny not "spend a dime on that kind of thing."  I was polite.  And the price of the letter quickly went above Jenny's budget anyway.

A week later, I received a small padded envelope at my campus address at Occidental College, from Ginny Heinlein's address in Florida.  In stark Sharpie pen, the words: CAUTION RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL were written across the envelope. Please remember that this was before 9-11.  So I waved a Geiger counter over the package. Seemingly cold.  I opened up the package, and found what is pictured above:  a small plastic box, a piece of odd looking foamy grit-filled rock, and a typed bit of cardboard.

It turns out that Robert Heinlein had many fans in the sciences, and more than a few working in New Mexico on the first atomic bomb, Project Trinity.  One of those scientists, Robert Cornog, obtained a small sample of sand fused by the first atomic explosion for Heinlein.  Such items, formed by the extreme heat and radiation of a nuclear detonation, are called "trinitite."  This last link is particularly interesting, as the blogger analyzes his sample of trinitite using very fancy instruments and mathematics.   

But why would Heinlein have this historically interesting piece of trinitite?  Keep in mind that Robert Heinlein had written several stories about the possibility of nuclear material and war, without knowing about the atomic bomb project!  These include "Blowups Happen" and "Solution Unsatisfactory," both in 1940.  So it may not have been a surprise that Heinlein had fans among the physicists and nuclear engineers in the Manhattan Project.

Ginny wrote in an e-mail that the sample was originally so "hot" that it would expose film from across the room and was kept out in the garage (I don't know if that is accurate, but that is what she communicated to me).  But it quickly "cooled down," and was sat Heinlein's desk for over twenty years, while he wrote many of the novels I so loved as a boy and teenager.

And Ginny gave the object to me.  Ginny and I were never close friends, but we exchanged e-mails quite a bit before she passed away in 2003.  When my son Anson was born in 2000, Ginny sent us a spoon and tiny teddy bear, which my sons called their "Ginny Bear."  Here my youngest son Zachary shows off "his" Ginny Bear, when he was still quite small.

William Patterson is the official biographer of Robert A. Heinlein, having written a two volume analysis of the author's life and times (Volume I was fascinating, and I cannot wait for Volume II). Bill has written about some of the history of this artifact, and told me of some details that Ginny did not communicate to me.  He may wish to make more comments on this blog regarding this topic.  Bill Patterson is the "go to" guy for information about Robert Heinlein's life, that is for certain.

All I know is that this "totem" was a gift from Ginny Heinlein to 
me, a bit of history collected by the late, great Robert Heinlein.  It means a great deal to me.  And it sits in my campus office, along with other items from my "Cabinet of Curiosities" I use when I chat with students. But it is a true piece of history, and the prize of my collection.

I'm a lucky man in many ways.  This is yet another example.  

A Nice Suprise---One of My You Tube Videos Is On Boing Boing (Plus An Update!)!

As the Polar Vortex begins to grip part of our country again this week, I was thinking about how in Tacoma we have not had a great deal of super cold weather this year.  Lucky us.

We microbiologists use "the cold" a lot in our work, from keeping enzymes chilled, to making cryogenic frozen stocks, and similar activities.  My -80 degree freezer is always humming in my little research laboratory.

Imagine my surprise when someone on Twitter alerted me to the fact that one of my YouTube videos is on the "cool tech" website Boing Boing.  Here is the link.  And here is my video, again.

The author of the post, Maggie Koerth-Baker, did a great job of explaining the fascinating ice nucleation bacteria.  I do indeed use Pseudomonas syringae as my "ice-nucleator" in a demonstration to my Microbiology students each year, and I wrote about doing so on this blog two years ago here.  Though the video in the Boing Boing article is fine (that is my hand in the video, by the way), I like this next one better, since it has bonus student commentary---and you can see the nucleation event pretty clearly.

I had heard about ice nucleation bacteria for many years, but learned the "demonstration" from the great Jo Handelsman and her colleagues, who use it as a classroom exercise with introductory students.  So my hat is off, once again, to Jo and company.  Joseph Conrad in "Lord Jim" wisely wrote that "You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends."  On the basis of my friends, I am lucky and rich indeed!

This incident also shows the value of Twitter.  I literally had no idea that someone was writing that article, and the only way I found out was being alerted by a "microtweep."

Anyway, thanks to Boing Boing and Maggie Koerth-Baker!

UPDATE:  I am very grateful to Ms. Koerth-Baker, again, for her writing about that YouTube video of mine.  The video has appeared in several other places besides Boing Boing.  

The video (and short write up) have appeared on Gizmodo in Australia,  the Periscope Post in Turkey, the Business Insider in India, Digital Journal, and most surprisingly to me,  the Huffington Post in the United Kingdom. Interestingly, not a single one of these news organizations dropped me a line or informed me.  No harm was done, nor was I misrepresented. But as I mentioned above, the only way I heard about this was via people reading the material letting me know! I'm glad they did.

I was also contacted by the folks from the PBS show Radiolab. When I spoke with their representative, I was surprised to learn that they had not read or seen any of the news reports or videos discussed in this post! The story they told was that they had become interested in rapid ice formation via bacteria (snow making, maybe?) and asked around.  Someone at Princeton University (I don't know who), gave them my name.  

I do not know if I will actually have a real interview to be broadcast (I don't think it likely, to be honest), but it was a LOT of fun for me to talk with them about science education, bacteria, and related topics.

Coincidences abound!

The other amusing part was that the YouTube video that Boing Boing popularized (the first one in this post) has had more than 60,000 views now...and it had had less than 2,000 just a few days ago.  So the "Social Media Sphere" (maybe noosphere is a good expression, with apologies to Teilhard de Chardin) is a powerful entity.  Anyway, more than a few people have criticized my video, claiming that it was rigged, or had nothing to do with bacteria, or (my favorite) was carried out using a sodium acetate solution (which also can precipitate from a seed impressively).

These nay sayers did not read about bacterial ice nucleation in the lab or the classroom (referenced and linked above).  And they also give me a great deal of credit for being far brighter and more devious than the sad reality suggests!

Thanks for the interest and for reading.  It will be interesting to see what happens next...

UPDATE #2:

NPR's show RadioLab did indeed have a segment discussing ice nucleation effects, including from bacteria, here.  Sadly, I was not an on-air interviewee.  A couple of staff members talked with me and communicated via e-mail with me about the topic, and I was happy to help out.  And I did get a acknowledgement.  They even mentioned my video without using my name (oh, well).  

On their website (linked above), the NPR folks did create a video showing ice nucleation (and a toy horse---listen to the podcast to understand the interesting reason why).  Here is the video:

Cool (!) as it was,  I have to say that I like my videos better (a proud "parent" perhaps?).  And the second video I posted shows the initial nucleation event very clearly---with, as I say, bonus student enthusiasm!

Someday I will get to promote Microbial Pride via radio or television.  Though I will sheepishly admit that I have a perfect face for radio...

On a Cellular Level, All of My Freshmen Biology Students Are Overachievers!

In my freshman biology course (Biology 111, "The Unity of Life"), we cover a number of diverse topics in cell and molecular biology as we race along in lecture. Historically, students love the genetics section and have reservations about biochemistry and metabolism related topics.  Though I am trained as a microbial geneticist, I cannot think of a more central topic in biology than metabolism---after all, it is how the very machineries of life grind along, day after day.

I remember a cartoon on the Internet, years ago, showing the cartoon character Homer Simpson, snoring away on a hammock, with a beer can balanced on his ample belly.  The caption was "On a Cellular Level, I'm Pretty Busy."  Because it is true.  

Even while a student's attention might wander, the machinery of her or his cells are ticking along at impressive speeds.  DNA is replicating, unwinding at hundreds of thousands of RPM (without generating heat!).  Proteins are being synthesized and recycled. The endomembrane system is a complicated traffic snarl/ballet of vesicles carrying cargo to diverse destinations within the cell. 

One of the great things about Twitter is the ability to communicate with different people from all over the world.  Thus, I was able to get to know the great "Beatrice the Biologist," who does wonderful science-themed cartoons.  You should definitely check out her website here.  She wrote and illustrated a wonderful children's book about cells ("Amoeba Hugs and Other Nonsense") and recently released a truly great book for students and adults about genetics ("What's In Your Genes?").  

I told "Beatrice" about my class, and the challenges of telling my students about the intricate, active, and interrelated metabolic processes that exist in each and every one of their cells .  I then commissioned a comic from her on this topic.  Here is what she created.

Pretty much nails the concept, right?

"Beatrice" wrote about this cartoon here (again, her blog and website are very much worth your time).  

So I guess it really doesn't matter if a student is eager and overengaged, overwhelmed by new information, or not even in lecture that day. Because on a cellular level, each and every one of my students is indeed an overachiever!

Thank you, "Beatrice"!

My class thanks you, too.

Today is a good day, even with a pile of grading.

A Bioluminescent Valentine's Day!

I was pleased and flattered that the wise and elegant Moselio Schaechter, of the American Society for Microbiology sponsored "Small Things Considered," listed this blog as favored reading recently. Elio, if you are reading this, I continue to be amazed at how well you keep up with the dizzing pace of Matters Microbial™; I think you remain one of my Microbial Heroes™, as Jon Eisen describes them!

Elios's kind words reminded me that I should post more frequently, since some people are reading my essays! 

Even though many of my colleagues at large educational institutions have much larger classes than I do, my current freshman "Unity of Life" course has 48 students (all of them in lecture three days a week, and three lab sections of 16 each during the week) and certainly keeps me jumping. The students come from a wide variety of backgrounds, ranging from business to exercise science to psychology to biology.  It is thus a moving target pedagogically,  especially as I move into the more challenging areas of biochemistry and metabolism. 

However, I cannot let today's holiday pass unnoticed.  To be sure, I am a microbiologist and geneticist, but a romantic heart beats inside me just the same. Thus, I would like to share with you some of my "bioluminescent art" for Valentine's Day!  As described from time to time on this blog, I grew up cultures of Photobacterium leignothi and "wrote" onto Petri dishes containing appropriate nutrient medium.  I then incubated for a few hours, and voilá!

One the central concepts I discuss with students in all of my classes is how microbes communicate with one another using low molecular weight molecules. This chemical "language" can control gene expression, allowing some genes to only be activated at high population densities.   This process has come to be called "quorum sensing," and it is a very hot topic indeed in microbiology, controlling such diverse processes in many microbes as pathogenesis, pigment production, adhesion, and of course bioluminescence.

Since quorum sensing is a critical topic in biology, why not immortalize it on Valentine's Day, with bacteria using this very process to generate beautiful light in the darkness?  Here is one such image.

Another image image with the same theme.

In this photograph,  I am trying to get more reflection from the shelf on which the plates are propped.

And finally, I need to recognize the many roles my wife of 15 years, Dr. Jennifer J. Quinn, has played and continues to play in my life.  Jenny has exemplified loyalty, honor, professionalism, and love in ways that humble me daily.  I cannot imagine life without her.  Jenny brings light into my life so often, and I would like to commemorate that fact in bioluminescence here.

I hope that everyone reading this has a lovely, lovely Valentine's Day.  And considering how frequently microbes engage in horizontal gene transfer, I would like to wish your mutualistic and co-evolved diverse population of microbiota a romantic day as well!

Freshman Biology, Word Clouds, and Preconceived Notions

According to my teaching schedule here at the University of Puget Sound, Spring Semester is when I teach my "freshmen level" Biology 111 course.  Biology 111 is nicknamed "The Unity of Life," and that is the way I teach it:  just like Jacques Monod wrote, what is true for elephants is often true for E. coli.  Well, up to a point.  I do think it is important to remind students of the common strategies used by life on Earth, so the course title makes sense.

A couple of characteristics of the course stand as challenges to be overcome.  First, the class is large for a small liberal arts institution---48 students in lecture three days a week, split up into three lab sections of 16 that meet once a week (apologies to my colleagues at large institutions, but do keep in mind that I teach lecture and all the labs).  Anyway, the students get a fairly substantial dose of flamboyant Doc Martin, even though it is a "large" class. Here they are on the first day of class last week.  Fingers crossed that it is a fun class; so far so good.

The other challenge, of course, would be dealing with and overcoming the differing levels of preparation for this course.  We not only get folks interested in majoring in Biology, but also Psychology, Exercise Science, and even Business.  Some folks haven't had any chemistry at all since early high school, while others are quite savant on the latest in biology and biochemistry. Folks interested in, for example, human-centric biology may become frustrated by discussion of Matters Molecular™.  So I work hard to make things relevant to all the students, no matter the background, using everyday examples (the concept of structure and function in light of sugar substitutes is one topic I cover). It's definitely a moving target.  So I need to have a "snapshot" of how the new students perceive aspects of biology.

How best to evaluate "where" the students "are" coming into my classroom?  Why not use "word clouds"?  Word clouds are ways of representing "single word" answers to questions in a fairly artistic fashion, with the size of the word often representing its frequency. 

On the second day of class, I said the word "germ" and asked the students to write down the first single word that popped into their heads.  Here are the results.

The first thing that leaps out at me from the response is how people conflate "germ" with "bacteria."  Fair enough, if not complete in a definitional sense.  But notice all the negative terms involving disease, "dirtiness," and the like.  My favorite from this word cloud would be "phobia" or "germophobe," because certainly people seem to have an anti-microbe phobia these days!

The term "germ" was popularized originally by Louis Pasteur.  But he didn't mean anything relating to disease with the word.  The original intent came up as part of his campaign against the concept of spontaneous generation. A "germ" meant "a bit of life," and with those lovely goose-necked flasks (and I admit I would like to own a replica!), Pasteur was able to convince people that life always came from life!  Unfortunately, the term "germ" is "meme-locked" as meaning something associated with disease.  I have vowed to change that.  Pathogens are like the juvenile delinquents of the microbial world:  small in number but they get ALL the press!

I then said the word "bacteria" and asked the knee-jerk one word response from the class.  Here is the word cloud that generated.

Again, notice the conflation of "bacteria" with "disease."  Sigh.  I have some work to do, as do secondary educators!  But amidst all the "dirt," "infection," and "gross" type responses, I had some interesting ones.  "Interesting" made me feel good.  "Tiny" is not always true, but is reasonable.  Some positive responses appeared:  "good," "probiotics," "yogurt," "cheese," and "antibiotics." There were also some odd ones:  "claw" I have no explanation for, nor "mistaken."  "virus" needs some clearing up, as does the seemingly popular "mold" (since bacteria are not fungi!). 

It certainly gives me a great deal to think about in my introductory course, and hopefully some insights for middle and high school teachers.

I then moved on and asked the first "single word" response that appeared in their cerebral cortexes when I said the word "cell."

Well, it is good that "biology" came first (again, size of the word is related to the number of times it is seen in the responses).  But look at the other words:  "complicated," "cancer," "life", "small," and so forth.  Lots of comments refer to parts of cells, complexity, size, and so forth.  I cannot explain "goku," as I certainly hope that Dragonball is not part of cell biology!  Finally, some people thought of "cell" in a different context by writing "inmate" and "prison."  But I think we can agree that more people have appropriate thought-images of the word "cell" in their brains.

And finally, the same exercise when I said the word "DNA" to the class.  Now, it may well be that the best way to do this is not ALL on the same day! Regardless, here is their response.

I found this to be VERY interesting, indeed.  What conclusions can we draw from this last word/concept cloud?

Well, "genetics" or "genes" appear to be the #1 answers, and this shows how the term "DNA" has been perceived in everyday life, I think. Most everyone else had a nearly equal spread of different terms, clearly originating from different sources. 

Some students were keyed to procedural words like "PCR," "data," and "forensics."  A few students showed their enthusiasm with "awesome" and "cool." Others referred to structural words, such as "ladder," "spiral," "acid," "sequence," "doublehelix" (not really one word, but okay), "sugar," and "strand."  Still other students opted for concept driven response-words, like "evolution," "unity," "code," and the like.  "Watson" showed up, but no Crick, Franklin, or Wilkins (I will fix that).  

There were some unusual choices, as well, since as "red" and "blah."  Blah?  Well, it is a response.

At the risk of sounding like a social scientist, the names that we give ideas and concepts can alter the way in which we think about those ideas and concepts.  So the "knee-jerk" responses to words can give a useful snapshot depicting HOW certain ideas are perceived by a classroom.  This in turn can impact our own teaching in response, to improve student learning and outcomes.

Why not give wordcloud-responses a try in your own classroom? In addition, thinking about this might give students some perspective into how they encounter and assimilate new ideas.

Let me know what you find out!