Duke Research

Beautiful bacteria 🧽 🧫
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Duke Researchers have uncovered a basic but surprising fact: your kitchen sponge is a better incubator for diverse bacterial communities than a laboratory Petri dish. But it’s not just the trapped leftovers that make the cornucopia of microbes swarming around so happy and productive, it’s the structure of the sponge itself.
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These different species of bacteria — each engineered to glow a different color so researchers can track their growth — are thriving in harmony with one another thanks to their structured environment. Credit: Lingchong You, Duke University