Question: Do you use a microscope to look at germs

Ciarán O'Brien answered on 17 Nov 2014:

Sometimes, yes. Germs are tiny, so if you want to actually see them, you’ll need a microscope. I’ve used this to confirm a couple of things about the bacteria I’m most interested in right now, Propionibacterium avidum. It’s a “gram positive” bacteria, which means that when you add certain coloured dyes to it, the dyes will stick to the hard cell wall and make the bacteria look dark purple. If the bacteria don’t have a cell wall, the dye won’t colour them, and we call them “gram negative”.

There’s only so muhc we can tell with a microscope though, a lot of bacteria look very alike except for minor differences. The best way to really examine them and what they can do is to find out what their DNA says about them. To do that we extract it from a few billion bacteria and run it through a sequencing machine.

Still, I do like the microscope. It really makes you feel like a scientist, y’know?