Participants in the new season of the All-Russian crowdsourcing scientific project were students of all areas of training of the Institute of Biology and Biotechnology of the largest university in the region. They were joined by Kirov schoolchildren, even first-graders!
Recall that "microbes hunters" is a well-known all-Russian project aimed at the introduction of schoolchildren to the world of big science through their own research under the guidance of mentors. Project teams collect soil samples, characterize the physico-mathematical properties of soil; separate bacteria from the soil that fix atmospheric nitrogen; run microscopic analysis of bacteria found; Send samples of those cultures to research institutes, where scientists isolate and analyze the DNA of the collected samples. Understanding scientific methods, project participants do all the experiments with their own hands!
Last year, the project was joined by the Institute of Biology and Biotechnology of VyatSU: back then it was just 14 students of microbiology under the leadership of the Senior Teacher of the Department of Microbiology Lyudmila Ustyuzhaninova. This experience has become so useful and successful that in the new season on the hunt for microbes in the framework of project activities, students of all directions of training IBBT were reached - students of the Kirov schools joined them!
Very soon, in the spring, researchers will present their reports at the "Microbial Hunters" conference, but for now we;ll familiarize you with project teams.
Sofia Dormidontova and Anna Nagovitsyna (the Koch sticks team) study the effect of heavy metals, the common source of which are thrown out batteries, on the activity of the growth of bacteria of the Azotobacter genus.
Team "Bricklayers" (Anastasia Belikova, Ivan Luchinin, Daria Lytkina, Ekaterina Maryina, Anastasia Nadolinskaya, Karina Ryazanova, Alexey Serebryakov, Pavel Smolnikov, Alyona Chernyshova) is studying the effect of aeration on the synthesis of biopolymers by bacteria of the Azotobacter genus.
"Bibotechnology" is the name of the third team, which consists of second-year students of "biotechnology" course: Alyona Schmarova, Ksenia Tsyuva, Anastasia Gorbunova. Students explore the effect of heavy metals on synthesis of biopolymers by bacteria of the genus Azotobacter.
Nine-graders of the Kirov school number 53 Danil Savinih and Danil Perevozchikov is the team "Cool Biologists". The guys are looking for nitrogen in soil samples near roads, studying the dependence of the concentration of microorganisms from the distance to the carriageway and road traffic.
And finally, we present the most young microbes hunters! These are students 1 "E" class of high school with an in-depth study of individual items No. 52 Kirov Lion Ustyuzhaninov and Danil Yakovlev, or the team "Two friends"! Their task is not easy, but very interesting - to compare the content of nitrogen in the soils of flat and mountainous terrain. Boys check the hypothesis, according to which the diversity and activity of soil microorganisms in the mountains are lower than in the plains.
The design activities of microbes hunters are implemented under the guidance of mentors. With "cool biologists" there is Anastasia Konova, a student of 3rd year of studies in "Pedagogical education" (with two profiles of preparation). Mentor of all other teams is Lyudmila Ustyuzhaninova, senior teacher of the Department of Microbiology.
