{"id":376,"date":"2015-11-11T10:04:53","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T10:04:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/bioimaging\/?p=376"},"modified":"2022-04-13T16:27:04","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T16:27:04","slug":"naomis-nightmares-of-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/bioimaging\/naomis-nightmares-of-nature\/","title":{"rendered":"NEWS: Naomi’s nightmares of nature."},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Naomi\"<\/a>

Image: BBC camera\u00a0crew (left) filming the follicle mite, Demodex<\/em> (right), for an episode of the children’s television programme, Naomi’s Nightmare’s of Nature.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Not so long ago we received\u00a0a strange request from Dr Sarah Perkins<\/a>\u00a0(BIOSI):\u00a0could\u00a0we accommodate\u00a0a BBC camera\u00a0crew within the Bioimaging Facility\u00a0to\u00a0film an episode of the Children’s CBBC television programme, Naomi’s Nightmares of Nature<\/a>? The nightmare in question, was the\u00a0eyelash mite, \u00a0Demodex<\/em>, <\/em>a commensal ectoparasite that lives\u00a0within the hair follicles\u00a0(Demodex follicularum<\/em>)\u00a0and sebaceous glands (Demodex brevis<\/em>)\u00a0of the face, feeding off sebum and other organic detritus. Anyway, prior to filming, we spent an anxious morning attempting to isolate live Demodex<\/em> from \u2018volunteers\u2019 faces by various means, \u00a0including via sellotape, with little success Fortunately, when Naomi and her production team arrived, we struck gold! A few eyelashes extracted from their cameraman, Steve, revealed a bumper load of parasites and, using DIC<\/a> optics,\u00a0we were able to generate some nice microscopic footage of\u00a0a family of mites tucking into their evening meal!<\/p>\n

AJH<\/p>\n

Find out more:<\/h5>\n