Microbe Safari
Taught by Raj Sivaraman
Raj Sivaraman is a PhD virologist, scientist, and comedian. He has presented his work at international conferences, Nerd Nite, Empiricist League, and at various parties (to many people's dismay). He has been featured in the Nature Magazine, Cambridge Science Festival, and the New York Times. He also lost on Jeopardy! because he missed a question about ABBA. So, don't talk to him about ABBA.
Our body is composed of about 30 trillion cells, which may seem like a lot, until you consider the fact that we are host to 100 trillion bacterial cells. Combine that with the fact that only 2% of our DNA is used to make proteins to perform cell functions, and 8% of our DNA is virus sequence. Our body is essentially a host to viruses, fungi, protozoans, and bacteria! Don't worry, most of them are pretty good and help keep us alive!
So, come and explore the diversity of wildlife that lives on, in and around our bodies - in this Microbe Safari! We'll hunt down the 5000 indigenous bacterial species that live in our mouth! We'll investigate how our DNA is essentially a crypt to ancient viral infections, some of which occurred 250 million years ago! We'll also try to not make you throw up as we discuss worms!
