Merry Microbes, everyone!

This episode is all devoted to the jolliest of the seasons! Independant of you counting yourself to the group of people starting to indulge in mulled wine and cookies with the first cold day of the year (guilty!) or are more a supporter of Team Grinch, we hereby serve you 20min of wintery fun facts about microbes! Interesting for people with and without previous knowledge about microbiology!

In case we tickled your fancy, here some links where you can read more about the topics:

Semi-sarcastic rants about Santa Claus (really fun read!):

https://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b5261

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4676089/

How Pseudomonas is making it snow: 

https://www.mpg.de/10470442/ice-formation-bacteria-syringae

Learning about those parasitic poop twigs:

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/12/the-word-mistletoe-literally-means-dung-twig/

https://blog.nwf.org/2012/12/12-things-to-know-about-mistletoe/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistletoe

The effect of having Christmas with in-laws on health:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452231719300090

https://www.bmj.com/content/328/7443/794

Why microorganisms are a key factor in chocolate production:

https://schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2018/06/the-microbial-ecology-of-chocolate.html

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15462126/

Microbial production of vanillin: 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3768639/

How chocolate might help you stay healthy: 

https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2014/march/the-precise-reason-for-the-health-benefits-of-dark-chocolate-mystery-solved.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4696435/

Learn about inequalities in chocolate production and why we recommend to buy fair trade/UTZ certified chocolate:

https://makechocolatefair.org/issues

https://www.fairtrade.net/product/cocoa

https://utz.org/what-we-offer/certification/products-we-certify/cocoa/

Why we like lichens: 

https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/beauty/lichens/about.shtml

Some interesting facts about reindeers: 

https://www.britannica.com/animal/reindeer

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