Physics of bacteria! Microbe violence!

Tonight's Science Pub was on the surprising topic of the physics of gut microbes! Our speaker, Raghu Parthasarathy, is a biophysicist who studies how microbes work. They use zebrafish, which our university is famous for - zebrafish are transparent as embryos, and it's possible to study all sorts of internal processes by looking right through the living fish with special cameras. We especially learned about what happens when two particular types of microbes are competing within a living organism, and J. asked a great question about the mechanics, which is exactly what this physicist was studying. It turns out that one of the two types of microbes actually stabs the other type!