LAUSR

One of the things that drew me to microbiology was microscopy: you could take a small aliquot from a test tube that smelled both a little salty and a little like soup broth and put it under a microscope and focus down and suddenly see how it was teeming with life. I could see the little rod shapes of Pseudomonas aeruginosa swimming around, and it was endlessly fascinating to peer down into their smaller world to see what they were doing, how they formed communities, and how this changed in response to stress.