照片由lisa abitbol

“我希望学生了解我们不仅仅是人类细胞的包包 - 我们在这种真正紧张的与我们为我们提供各种服务的微生物的合作关系，”生物科学副教授Vanja Klepac-Ceraj说。为此，她教导了一个环境微生物学课程，探讨了该领域的基本面，同时让学生有机会操纵实验室的微生物。

When Klepac-Ceraj set out to design the course, she knew that she wanted to focus on microbes in the human body. These microorganisms—and the microbiomes they make up—play a vital role in everything from processing food and drugs to fighting off intruders, and can also cause various diseases. “The way we think about human health cannot be independent from microbes,” she says. “Microbes had millions of years to evolve and adapt without us, and when we came, we were never without them.”

期间,学生探索基本让步pts such as what microbes are present in humans, how these microbes interact, how microbial communities change over time, and what factors drive these changes. They also consider how microbes vary throughout the body and across individuals and populations—all while learning about the techniques that scientists use to study microbes. “Microbiology is at this really exciting time where we have finally figured out how to look at microbes,” Klepac-Ceraj says. “It’s almost like having a little glass lens, like Alice in Wonderland.”

对于实验室组件，Klepac-Ceraj意识到她需要一个模型系统，让学生能够安全地使用微生物。经过一些考虑，她提出了一个令人惊讶的乳制品的解决方案：奶酪。“你可以提出关于与人体相关的微生物的问题，你可以询问与奶酪相关的微生物，”Klepac-Ceraj说。在过去几年中，学生使用下一代DNA测序来检查微生物基因组，比较来自美国和欧洲奶酪的微生物，以及来自天然和盛开的外皮的奶酪的微生物。

This year, faced with the shortened term system and a partially virtual class, Klepac-Ceraj chose to focus labs on culturing, a classical microbiology technique in which microbes are grown on different kinds of lab plates. She mailed complete lab kits to off-campus students (and re-mailed kits after an ill-timed winter storm), and the class conducted experiments exploring, for example, how different salt concentrations and antibiotics affect microbial growth and interaction. “There is nothing more satisfying to me than picking up a chunk of cheese and a petri plate and going through the process of growing microbes and seeing how they look, how they smell, how fast they grow,” Klepac-Ceraj says.

与微生物的迷恋不会阻止那里。作为对国家卫生研究院的儿童健康成果计划的环境影响的一部分，Klepac-Ceraj和她的团队将在出生后1000天追踪多达1,000名儿童的微生物体，以调查影响健康的微生物因素。Klepac-Ceraj被培训为微生物生态学家，也是在Waban湖和Painshop Pond靠近家庭的规划研究。在这些网站上，她将每周或每月收集样品，以了解微生物社区随着时间的推移而变化。“微生物到处都是，”Klepac-Ceraj说 - 她认为它是为了她的使命，将学生的眼睛开放到我们周围的“微生物仙境”。