Culture Collections: Microbes from WW1 and Fleming's nose

07/03/15 • 9 min

Private Ernest Cable was a WW1 soldier who died on 13 March 1915 and his body now lies in a communal cemetery in Wimereux, France.

Records suggest that Cable was the first British soldier in WW1 to die from dysentery - an intestinal diarrhoeal infection, caused by Shigella flexneri bacteria. Today, a sample of the very Shigella which infected and killed Cable can be found at the National Collection of Type Cultures (NCTC), where it is helping researchers to understand the evolution of drug resistance.

The NCTC is part of Public Health England's Culture Collections, which includes thousands of strains of bacteria, viruses and fungi. We spoke to Julie Russell, Head of Culture Collections, about some of the more unusual historical strains housed there, and the role that they continue to play in the fight against disease.

Image: Wimereux Communal Cemetery

Image credit: Wernervc on Wikimedia Commons under CC-BY-SA-3.0

Private Ernest Cable was a WW1 soldier who died on 13 March 1915 and his body now lies in a communal cemetery in Wimereux, France.

Image: Wimereux Communal Cemetery

Image credit: Wernervc on Wikimedia Commons under CC-BY-SA-3.0

Previous Episode

Maths, books and antibiotics

We’ve been out and about this month, interviewing researchers in Glasgow, Manchester and Galway for the podcast. Up first, Ben travelled to Scotland to chat with Dr Adam Kucharski from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Adam is an expert in disease modelling, and he told us how his work is helping in the fight against the ongoing Ebola outbreak.

Books and films are full of end-of-the-world microbiological fiction, but can they be used to help engage the public with the fundamentals of disease research? Anand went to Manchester to speak with Professor Jo Verran, founder of the Bad Bugs Book Club.

A few weeks ago, Ben attended the Society’s Irish Division Meeting in Galway. There were lots of great talks, and he got a chance to grab a few minutes with Professors Kim Lewis and Martin Cormican. Kim is Director of the Antimicrobial Discovery Center at Northeastern University, Boston, USA, while Martin is Professor of Bacteriology and a Consultant Microbiologist at NUI Galway. Both are interested in antibiotic resistance, but are coming at it from different angles…

Image credit: Phalinn Ooi under CC BY 2.0

Next Episode

Forensic Microbiology Part 1: Microbes of Death

This month’s episode of Microbe Talk is something a bit different – the first in a two-part special on forensic microbiology.

In part one, we’re exploring the microbes of death and decay – and how they can be used by forensic scientists to work out when and how someone has died.

We spoke to writer Mo Costandi about his recent experiences visiting body farms in Texas, where scientists study the process of decomposition. Mo wrote an article for the Wellcome Trust’s Mosaic on the subject (which is well worth reading), so we asked him to the Society’s offices to find out more about what happens to our bodies after we die.

We also hear from forensic scientist Dr Gulnaz Javan, who is conducting research into the “thanatomicrobiome”, or microbes of death, at one of these facilities. Gulnaz and her team take samples from cadavers and the surrounding soil in order to study the microbial communities present at different stages of decomposition. She talked to us about a recent paper from her group that discusses their early findings.

This episode contains descriptions of decomposing human corpses.

Image credit: Mo Costandi

Music: Chris Zabriskie under CC BY 4.0

Sound effects: “BunchOfFlies” by HerbertBoland under CC BY 3.0, “Countryside in Texas, insects and birds” by felix.blume under CC0 1.0