Micro zoo?

Nolanger

Are there special zoos where they exhibit bacteria/viruses and other tiny lifeforms? Is there somewhere in the world that the public can view living microorganisms which are magnified?

Tree

Heh, this is exactly what i was imagining based on the topic

Dont think i've ever heard of such a thing. I'd be a pita to set one up, coz you'd need to find a way to stain the microbes w/o killing them so you could visualise them nicely. Dead ones are just so much prettier under a microscope.

Also, viruses only really live in tissues, so you'd need to be doing plenty of awkward cell culture, or you could crystalise them and look at them under a polarised light source...

artieanna

Nolanger wrote: »

Are there special zoos where they exhibit bacteria/viruses and other tiny lifeforms? Is there somewhere in the world that the public can view living microorganisms which are magnified?

Gosh! now that would be heaven to me;)...or even, I wouldn't mind a zoo of dead microorganisms would be cool:cool:

RocketFalls

I presume you can purchase slides. Otherwise, a quick google search should get you anything you need.

In terms of living organisms? That wouldn't be very feasible. Again, google should yield some video footage.

r3nu4l

The cost of culture media would be prohibitive towards this but it would be good (and less expensive) to have recorded time-lapse video of bacteria, yeast and mammalian cultures growing and dividing.

We used to do time-lapse video in our lab of cancer cells growing in T-75 tissue culture flasks. The idea was that we would examine how various investigational anti-cancer agents inhibited the growth of the culture as a whole, as well as examining the effects on a molecular level.

A slide show of various organisms could be produced with an audio track placed over it describing the organisms, the diseases they caused (or their role in the human body) and therapies or the effect of their absence in the body could all be described.