Ki instagram Swedish Medical Nanoscience Center

Editor's Notes

1. Karolinskainstitutet Gomorron Instagram! Welcome to the Swedish Medical Nanoscience Center at the KI campus in#Solna . I'm Ben Libberton and I'm a#Postdoc and Public Information Officer here. This week I'll be pulling back the curtain on life inside Center and hopefully making the case to you that research is more fun when it's diverse. #nanoscience#stockholm #nanotechnology#microbiology #infectionbiology#immunology #electronics#organicelectronics @libbertonben
2. Karolinskainstitutet What do you have on your wall? At the Swedish Medical Nanoscience Center we are so passionate about understanding different bacterial infections, we even have a kidney infection on our wall. It doesn't look much like a kidney infection though. #microbiology#infectionbiology #ki #scienceandart#geekart #microscopy by @libbertonben
3. Karolinskainstitutet So what do we do? One our big goals is to study infection under more realistic conditions. Isolating bacteria and cells is convenient in the lab, but doing this can often give misleading results. We study infections live using intravital imaging in the relatively new field of Tissue Microbiology http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mib.2011.10.009#microscopy #microbiology #solnacampusby @libbertonben
4. Karolinskainstitutet But that's not all folks. We are also pioneering the field of organic bioelectronics. Many biological systems use electron or ion flows as signalling pathways. We mimic these in our lab using conducting 'plastics'. We have a lot of fun doing this, we've learned a lot more about our biological systems and found some interesting ways to interact with them. http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C5TB00382B#organicelectronics #organicbioelectronics#infectionbiology #microbiology#cellbiology by @libbertonben
5. Karolinskainstitutet Gomorron Instagram. Day 2 now so I thought I should introduce myself properly. I'm Ben and I work here in the Center. You could say I'm an early bird, I get into the lab, take a few selfies then set up my experiments for the day. After that I make coffee. Is it risky going to the lab before coffee? Yes, but I like the excitement. In the picture you can see I'm wearing a blazer, I don't normally do this, this is just for you Instagram :) You may have noticed my cookie medal, this is something that I do always wear.#solnacampus #microbiology #fika #coffeeby @libbertonben
6. Karolinskainstitutet A microbiologist, an electrical engineer and a signal processor walk into a lab... Not the start of a bad joke but what we do every day. So who do we need to do our work? Well, we sit down every week with an interdisciplinary team (not everyone is shown here) to discuss our experiments and listen to presentations. We all bring our own expertise but we're slowly becoming experts in the other fields as well. #interdisciplinary #solnacampus #ki#research #cellbiology #immunology#electronics #microbiology by@libbertonben
7. Karolinskainstitutet I thought I'd end the day with a question. What do you think is the best way for academics to use Instagram? How can we use Instagram to progress our careers? Maybe we shouldn't use it for that at all and it should be reserved for fun. I'd love to hear your thoughts, please also share this with people who might be able to contribute.#academia #science #research #phd#postdoc #socialmedia by @libbertonben
8. Karolinskainstitutet So, we are interested in infection biology. We want to understand more about infections in order to prevent them. Here are two mean bacteria that we work with a lot (don't be fooled by the cuteness). On the left we have Staphylococcus aureus, this menace is responsible skin and soft tissue infections. It's found on nealy 50% of human so out of the 2 of us, 1 is going to be a 'Staph' carrier. Normally it's harmless, but when you get a cut or you have an antibiotic resistant strain... On the right is Salmonella. This guy will wreak havoc in your intestines when you eat contaminated food.They are very different but they have something in common, they both form biofilms. #microbiology #infectionbiology#giantmicrobes #ki #biofilm by@libbertonben Delete Comment
9. Karolinskainstitutet I realise that the last photo may have made these deadly bacteria look too cute. I've used my considerable Photoshop skills to make the picture more realistic. #deadly #bacteria#giantmicrobes #microbiology#infectionbiology #ki #solnacampus by@libbertonben
10. Karolinskainstitutet To study bacteria and to overcome antibiotic resistance, we use a#nanoscience approach. I'll explain how we do that soon. The picture shows 2 different live bacteria, the red is E. coli and the blue/green is Enterococcus. We grow then on special differential growth media (in this case "Brilliant Blue") to tell them apart.#nofilter #bacteria #agarplate#microbiology #nanotechnology #ki#infectionbiology by @libbertonben
11. Karolinskainstitutet So let's meet the people fighting the good fight against antibiotic resistance. Marta & Haris are working with a Nanowell slide to test the resistance profile of bacteria. The Nanowell slide can fit 672 Wells in the area of a microscope slide. That means we can grow 672 bacterial cultures at the same time which will replace 7 x 96-well plates. But there's more... #nanotechnology#nanoscience #microbiology#antibioticresistance #antibiotics#nanoscience #kth in collaboration with our friends @kthstudenthttp://dx.doi.org/10.1128/JCM.01161-14 by@libbertonben
12. Karolinskainstitutet The Nanowell slide (from the previous post) works in a normal plate reader thanks to a 3D printed holder. Using special algorithms and plotting methods to handle the large amounts of data, we can work out resistance profiles in under 4 hours. That's fast by the way, current methods take about 18 hours. In collaboration with our friends @kthstudent#3dprinting #antibioticresistance #ki#microbiology #infectionbiology#nanotechnology #kth @kthstudent#nanosciencehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1128/JCM.01161-14 by@libbertonben
13. Karolinskainstitutet That's all for today folks. Remember that Wednesday is the new Friday. See you tomorrow for some more fun science.#wednesdayisthenewfriday #microbiology#ki #solnacampus #postdoc #phd by@libbertonben
14. Karolinskainstitutet Gomorron Instagram! It's a bit foggy today but I thought I'd take this opportunity to share why it is an exciting time to be on the #solnacampus at#ki . The is a lot of building work, both on the #karolinskainstitutet side and the#karolinskasjukhuset side. They are#building a new #hospital , new innovation centres and new #labs . they are even building us a new #tunnelbana . Things will start to be finished in a few years so watch this space. #cranes #construction #fog#Solna by @libbertonben
15. Karolinskainstitutet So why do we do what we do? While statistics vary, the fact is that people go into hospital every day to receive life changing treatments. However, these patients are also at risk of getting an infection which can compromise treatment, prolong a hospital stay or even put their life at risk. To us this is a tragedy. How can we live in an age where a cancer patient can go and be cured in hospital and then potentially die from an infection? We are doing our small part along with many researchers and governments around the world to stop this. #antibioticresistance#microbiology #infectionbiology #ki#solnacampus by @libbertonben
16. Karolinskainstitutet Lets meet some more people from the lab. This is Anette and she's an immunologist. She's good as well, she can stain a tissue section from 50 meters away. Anette is interested in different types of immune cells and how they behave when we study them with a tissue microbiology approach (I.e. infection in functional and live tissue). To do this she uses different staining techniques along with intravital, 2-photon microscopy. #ki#immunology #microscopy #staining#solnacampus #2photonmicroscope by@libbertonben
17. Karolinskainstitutet Next up is Svava. She's an MD and now a PhD student. Not only does she help us with our medical emergencies but she makes sure that our research has clinical relevance so that we can really help patients. She's also interested in Tissue Microbiology and understanding infection from the whole organ perspective (not just the Petri dish).#ki #medicine #karolinskasjukhuset#microbiology #microscopy #solnacampus#safetyglasses #labcoat #coolscience #labby @libbertonben
18. Karolinskainstitutet And now over to organic bioelectronics. Here is Karen and she is using organic bioelectronics to study infections. She uses a conducting "plastic" called PEDOT to make smart and biocompatible electrodes. Using the electrodes, we can get readings from the environment and the bacteria in a non-invasive way. This is good for experiments and hopefully even better for hospital patients in the future. As you can see, Karen is normally very happy, as long as you don't move her stuff.#organicbioelectronics #organicelectronics#microbiology #infectionbiology#happyscientist #lab #dontmove #pipettingby @libbertonben
19. Karolinskainstitutet A thought for today courtesy of Nobel Laureate, Sir Alexander Fleming. In his Nobel speech all those years ago, he warned how ignorance would lead to antibiotic resistance... and here we are. We're fighting against years of antibiotic abuse and trying to plan for a future where we simply don't have the same effective drugs as we did 50 years ago. We need new approaches both from the research and the usage points of view. That's what we're trying to do here. #ki#solnacampus #microbiology#infectionbiology #alexanderfleming#nobelprize #nobellaureate#antibioticresistance by @libbertonben
20. Karolinskainstitutet Gomorron Instagram, walking into work and can't help thinking, what a difference a day makes. Here are the same cranes from yesterday, look how blue the sky is! In Stockholm at this time of year that can happen. It's a great way to start a Friday. FYI in case you couldn't guess my nationality from the way that I look (surprisingly, lots of people can), I'm English. It's a very important national hobby of ours to comment on the weather so thanks for indulging me! #friday #solna#stockholm #ki #karolinskainstitutet#bluesky #cranes #construction #sweden#springiscoming #buildingsite by@libbertonben
21. Karolinskainstitutet We had a question before about how can we make agar plates more advanced, well perhaps you can see an application with Susi's invention. She also used the conductive 'plastic' PEDOT to develop a flat sensor that can detect the integrity of a cell monolayer. It does this automatically so you don't need to be hanging over your culture dish all the time. She recently presented the work @ucla and people were very excited http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C5TB00381D photos of Susi were taken by Marc N. Roseboro from David Geffen School of Medicine. #LA #organicbioelectronics#organicelectronics #ki #solnacampus#cellbiology #interdisciplinary#infectionbiology #presentation #postdoc#phd #spectroscopy by @libbertonben
22. Karolinskainstitutet Using PEDOT, the conducting 'plastic' we also made an artificial neurone. This processes signals in exactly the same way as a real neurone, generating signals going from chemical-electrical-chemical. We were also able to stimulate human cells with it. We were very excited and with some great help from our friends at the #ki press office we were featured in lots of nice media outlets including @svt @gomorronsverige with Ashkan Fardost (@touristinspace) ,@iflscience and science et avenir. The post on IFL Science received over 65 thousand Facebook shares and our YouTube press release was viewed over 40 thousand times. http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.bios.2015.04.058 #nanotechnology #nanoscience #neuro#neuroscience #svt #gomorronsverige#iflscience by @libbertonben
23. Karolinskainstitutet We also know that we can replace parts of our artificial neurone with wireless signals... Just let that sink in. We promise not to turn into Skynet. #skynet#terminator #neuroscience#nanotechnology #robots #bioscience#solnacampus #ai #artificialintelligence by@libbertonben
24. Karolinskainstitutet When you work with bacteria a lot, you start to look like them. Either that or a cloning experiment went wrong... #ki #microbiology #giantmicrobes#fridayfun #infectionbiology by@libbertonben