Take your kids to the bugs on a Sun­day af­ter­noon

Mi­cropia, the world's only mi­crobe zoo in Am­s­ter­dam

by Math­ias Grote

Fig­ure 1. Otto Rahn's (1881−1957, do not con­fuse with the homony­mous Nazi writer) ap­peal for a mu­se­um of "mi­croor­gan­isms in na­ture and ci­vi­li­za­tion." ASM Ar­chives, by cour­tesy of Jeff Karr

"Nowhere in the United States can the pub­lic get a true con­cep­tion of the role of microor­ganisms in na­ture and in our daily lives." These words, penned in the late 1940s by the Ger­man-Amer­i­can dairy mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gist Otto Rahn in an ap­peal for a "mu­seum of micro­biology" would re­main true for sev­eral decades to come – at least if one thinks of a per­manent in­sti­tu­tion de­voted to pre­sent­ing "mi­croor­gan­isms in na­ture and civ­i­liza­tion", as Rahn had it (Fig­ure 1). Since Au­gust 2014, the la­cuna out­lined by Rahn has been filled by Mi­cropia, the "first mu­seum of mi­crobes", or, per­haps more fit­tingly, the first "mi­crobe zoo". How­ever, Amer­i­cans will still have to cross the At­lantic to go see the mi­crobes (at least for a few months more, it seems – see STC's re­cent post on mi­crobes in mu­se­ums by Scott Chim­i­leski).

Mi­crobes in nat­ural his­tory

Mi­cropia, lo­cated in cen­tral Am­s­ter­dam, is part of "Natura Ar­tis Mag­is­tra". The some­what aca­de­mic name ("na­ture is the mas­ter of art") does in fact not sim­ply re­fer to the city's zoo, but to an in­sti­tu­tion cov­er­ing "nat­ural his­tory" in the proper sense of the word – i.e. as col­lect­ing, or­der­ing and show­ing both nat­ural ob­jects and ar­ti­facts, from the ele­phant to the min­eral to plan­ets. Thus, maybe it is only con­se­quen­tial that the idea to ex­hibit Chlorella & Co. was re­al­ized at a place at­temp­ting to present na­ture and civ­i­liza­tion broadly, and whose di­rec­tor, Haig Balian, seems to think of Mi­cropia as more than a "fun place" or elite en­ter­tain­ment; he seems to have a de­ci­sively po­lit­i­cal mis­sion. Think­ing of mi­crobes, Balian men­tioned the "in­ter­con­nec­tiv­ity of life", ecol­ogy, econ­omy and things like cli­mate change among his mo­ti­va­tions.

Fig­ure 2. A tardi­grade greet­ing vis­i­tors to Mi­cropia. Photo by Math­ias Grote

This, how­ever, does not mean that Mi­cropia is a dull pla­ce fre­quented by eighth graders on a Tues­day morn­ing – on the con­trary, when I got off the tram at Ar­tis in late De­cem­ber 2015, the place was bustling with folks of all ages, lan­guages and so­cial con­stel­la­tions (strollers, teen­age lovers, el­derly cou­ples). Vis­i­tors en­ter­ing the fancy ren­o­vated build­ing of Mi­cropia are greeted by the statue of a tardi­grade (Fig­ure 2) of hu­man size, cer­tainly the cud­dliest of all "mi­crobes" – the broad sense in which the term refers to "in­vis­i­ble life" here be­yond all too rigid cell bi­o­log­i­cal di­vi­sions is ob­vi­ous. Af­ter a sur­pris­ing ride in an el­e­va­tor (the se­cret of which will not be spoiled for po­ten­tial vis­i­tors read­ing this post) the ex­hi­bi­tion opens with an im­mense wall paint­ing of a tree of life – still very much tree and not net­work, but em­phat­i­cally rel­a­tiviz­ing pre­con­cep­tions of size, di­ver­sity and rel­e­vance in na­ture – things with claws and fur, or so the mes­sage through­out, rep­re­sent but a tiny and rather con­ven­tional frac­tion of life. One could sum­ma­rize the ex­hi­bi­tion as a tour through dif­fer­ent as­pects of mi­cro­bial life – from the ecology/biodiversity cor­ner (flasks of cyanobac­te­ria and their con­tri­bu­tion to at­mos­pheric oxy­gen, im­mense Wino­grad­sky co­lumns; Fig­ure 3/4) to the won­der cor­ner (mi­cro­bial abil­i­ties – Physarum poly­cephalum find­ing its way through a maze to­wards an oat flake, lu­mi­nous bac­te­ria, to be shaken by the vis­i­tor in a dark cab­i­net) to the filth-and-hy­giene sec­tion (the ecosys­tem of a tooth­brush, live sam­ples of rot, Petri dishes, a "sca­totheque" – google the et­y­mol­ogy for more, Fig­ure 5). Then, there is the lit­tle helpers/"green gold" (degra­da­tion, bio­fu­els, crop pro­tec­tion), as well as last (and some­how least!), the infection/disease cor­ner. Which brings me to the pre­sen­ta­tion strate­gies. Whereas the med­ical sec­tion har­bours rather con­ven­tional ex­hibits such as mod­els of bugs, pills etc., the other sec­tions veer onto new ter­rain.

Fig­ure 3. A dis­play for al­gae. Photo by Math­ias Grote

Many pieces of Micropia's ex­hi­bi­tion tran­scend the lim­its of space and time to al­low vis­i­tors to ex­pe­ri­ence mi­cro­bes in new ways. Ac­cord­ing to Wiebe Sloot, head of Mi­cro­pia's la­bo­ra­to­ry, the long phase of plan­ning in­cluded – among many other things – the de­sign of user-friendly mi­cro­scopes in co­op­er­a­tion with in­stru­ment mak­ers. These al­low pretty much any­body to gaze at the beauty of  live Spir­ulina or Volvox. The work of Micropia's lab, dis­tantly sim­i­lar to the main­ten­an­ce fa­cil­i­ties of a zoo or a botan­i­cal gar­den, in­cludes con­ti­nu­ous cul­ti­va­tion of the ex­hibits (for which novel me­thods of cul­ti­va­tion had to be de­vel­oped) as well as rou­tine pre­pa­ra­tions of sam­ples put un­der the mi­cro­scopes every mor­ning. So much for space – the bound­aries of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the em­pir­i­cal re­al­ity are tran­scended by ex­hibits such as video dis­plays of the vis­i­ble color-zone changes within a Wino­grad­sky col­umn over weeks. Here, Mi­cropia has done truly ground-break­ing work and Otto Rahn, one may sus­pect, would have been de­lighted by the Dutch pi­o­neers.

Ex­hibit­ing mi­crobes and mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy to­day

Fig­ure 4. Micropia's ex­hibit hall. Pho­to cour­tesy of Mi­cropia / Meike Hansen

Spot-on for the his­to­rian of sci­ence in me, the mi­cro­bi­o­lo­gists them­selves and their fum­bling around with glass­ware, such as when work­ing un­der a clean bench have been in­clu­ded as an ex­hibit (Fig­ure 6). Ob­serv­ing Mi­cro­pia's lab in ac­tion through a win­dow at the back of the room, we ex­pe­ri­ence how re­search is part of the hu­man cul­ture just like art – and now think again of nat­ural his­tory and the com­pli­cated name of Ar­tis (Eu­ro­pean rea­ders may also be re­minded of a car fac­tory be­hind glass walls such as Volkswagen's in­stal­la­tion in Dres­den). But there's also more flashy stuff around: The "Kiss-o-Me­ter" (in­form­ing about the num­ber of bugs trans­mit­ted by a kiss) sits promi­nently in the cen­ter of the ex­hi­bi­tion hall, some­what re­mi­nis­cent of a strong­man game on a fun­fair. These all too sen­sa­tional pieces may put off some vi­si­tors, but my ob­ser­va­tion was that kids of all ages seem to love them – one of the strengths of Mi­cropia be­ing that it of­fers very dif­fer­ent dis­plays to cater the needs and in­ter­ests of a het­ero­ge­neous zoo au­di­ence.

Micropia's over­all de­sign as an ex­hi­bi­tion is very much on the line with re­cent Sci­ence Mu­se­ums – it is hands-on (even the walls, made of lit­tle cell-like balls), it en­gages all sen­ses (also the ol­fac­toric, be pre­pared!) and it re­lies on light and sound de­sign to cre­ate a spe­cific at­mos­phere. The some­what eerie at­mos­phere cre­ated by blue lights and bub­bling, ooz­ing sounds evoke an "alien world" be­neath our feet. And al­though this al­to­gether makes sense, one may ask whether as­pects of this de­sign strat­egy could not also help to con­sol­i­date con­tem­po­rary clichés of how mi­crobes are re­pre­sented in the me­dia, such as the ste­reo­type of un­canny, un­con­trol­lable crit­ters from a sci­ence fic­tion movie. But this is a mi­nor point – Mi­cropia al­lows tak­ing home many other per­cep­tions of mi­crobes (such as that of the use­ful, con­trolled bug in a biotech vat).

Why Am­s­ter­dam, why now?

Ask­ing why "space­ship Mi­cropia" has landed when and where it did leads us first back to the vi­sion of Haig Balian, who pur­sued the idea for more than ten years (and through a fi­nan­cial cri­sis). Balian is not merely a mi­crobe fan for the sake of mi­crobes, but he de­scribes the mis­sion of his brain child as be­ing part of a "par­a­digm shift" on the so­cial, tech­no­log­i­cal and eco­nomic lev­els: "For years, na­ture has been ne­glected and sub­ju­gated to the econ­omy. So­ci­ety is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a change of heart at the mo­ment: we are be­com­ing aware that we will have to be­have dif­fer­ently to­wards the earth. We re­alise that cli­mate change is caus­ing eco­nomic dam­age. Part of the so­lu­tion lies in hon­ing ex­ist­ing tech­nol­ogy."

Fig­ure 5. The Petri dish wall. Photo cour­tesy of Mi­cropia / Marten van der Waal

No less than a dif­fer­ent con­cept of na­ture and a dif­fer­ent way of liv­ing – that is what mi­crobes are sup­posed to teach us. This brings me to an­other level of an­swer­ing the ques­tion of why Otto Rahn's vi­sion of a mu­seum for mi­crobes in na­ture and civ­i­liza­tion was re­al­ized in the Ne­therlands: not only has the coun­try been home to Leeu­wen­hoek (ho­n­oured with a replica of his mi­cro­scope at the en­trance), but also to the Delft School of mi­cro­bio­lo­gy, rep­re­sented by fig­ures such as Mar­t­i­nus Bei­jer­inck (pi­o­neer­ing elec­tive cul­tures, iso­lat­ing what later be­came to­bacco mo­saic virus), Al­bert Jan Kluyver and Cor­nelius B. van Niel (who have ex­plored com­mon meta­bolic prin­ci­ples in mi­crobes and mac­robes; van Niel may also be known to Amer­i­cans for his work at Stanford's Hopkin's ma­rine sta­tion, and the fa­mous mi­cro­bio­lo­gy course he taught to mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­o­gists).

Fig­ure 6. The win­dow into sci­ence – Micropia's lab. Pho­to cour­tesy of Mi­cropia / Marten van der Waal

But I don't want to turn this into a his­tory les­son: Let it sim­ply be said that the en­vi­ron­men­tal as­pect of mi­cro­bio­lo­gy, as well as the idea of mi­crobes pi­o­neer­ing "green tech­nol­ogy" is all but new to our times and it has his­to­ri­cal­ly strong ties to the Nether­lands. A mi­crobe mu­seum in vicin­ity to the In­sti­tut Pas­teur in Paris or Berlin's Ro­bert-Koch-In­sti­tut, one may sus­pect, would have looked very dif­fer­ently (and would pre­sum­ably never have be­come a zoo). Re­gard­ing the re­cur­ring vi­sion of a mi­cro­bial, non-fos­­sil econ­omy, ul­ti­mately pow­ered by the sun, one should add that Mi­cropia co­op­er­ates with com­pa­nies ac­tive in these ar­eas, for in­stance, to re­al­ize ex­hibits. As mi­cro­bi­o­lo­gy has al­ways been in­ter­wo­ven with prac­ti­cal in­ter­ests (e.g. Pasteur's early works on fer­men­ta­tion, sim­i­lar sto­ries could be told from Japan), this is nei­ther sur­pris­ing nor in it­self to be crit­i­cized. Yet, one may flag this out in fu­ture more promi­nently in the ex­hi­bi­tion in or­der to tell how the mi­cro­bial econ­omy has been part of larger so­cio-po­lit­i­cal con­stel­la­tions, and ul­ti­mately, how mi­crobes, as the most alien (think Ar­chaea) and the most do­mes­tic (think yeast) crea­tures, have al­ways ex­isted both in na­ture and in civ­i­liza­tion, or cul­ture (pun in­tended). This may be achieved – here the au­thor openly de­cla­res his own in­ter­ests – by re­flect­ing his­tor­i­cally or philo­soph­i­cally on the sci­ence that made the mi­cro­bial world ac­ces­si­ble, mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy, that is. How­ever, these are all mi­nor points to a suc­cess­ful and fasci­nating ven­ture that will hope­fully in­spire nat­ural his­tory mu­se­ums, zoos or botan­i­cal gar­dens around the globe to ex­hibit an hereto­fore ne­glected part of the bios­phere. If you live in the Nether­lands, take you kids to the mi­crobes on a Sun­day (and the grown-ups, too). If you live else­where, should you need an ex­cuse other than sun­flow­ers or tulips to go to Am­s­ter­dam, here you go!

Math­ias Grote is a mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gist turned his­to­rian of sci­ence wor­king at Hum­boldt-Uni­ver­sity of Berlin. He has pub­lished on the his­tory of the 20th cen­tury life sci­ences (with a spe­cial fo­cus on mem­branes, which kept him busy in the lab dur­ing his PhD). In his cur­rent project, he pur­sues the ques­tion of what hap­pens to know­ledge once it be­comes "old", es­pe­cially in tax­on­omy and classi­fi­ca­tion of mi­crobes.