I got a really fun early Christmas gift yesterday, Moyasimon 1: Tales of Agriculture, a manga series about a boy who can see microbes. His skills lead to some exciting fermentation-related adventures at his agriculture college. I learned a lot about miso, sake, and meats that ferment underground!
The microbes are super cute, and it also has one of the best anthropomorphized earthworms I've ever seen:
I of course also loved the chapter on beneficial microbes and gut flora:
And toe fungus!
While there's a lot of silliness that happens, the characters are very serious about microbes:
There's even a live action adaptation with adorable CGI microbes that cheer "Let's brew!" that you can watch on YouTube!
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Christina Agapakis is a biologist, designer, and writer with an ecological and evolutionary approach to synthetic biology and biological engineering. Her PhD thesis projects at the Harvard Medical School include design of metabolic pathways in bacteria for hydrogen fuel production, personalized genetic engineering of plants, engineered photosynthetic endosymbiosis, and cheese smell-omics. With Oscillator and Icosahedron Labs she works towards envisioning the future of biological technologies and synthetic biology design. Follow Christina Agapakis on Twitter
