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Sign up! Sign up! Only 18 spaces left! Please share, we want distribution across UK! 🍄

Wow.. what an influx of sign ups today - thank you all so much! 10 sampling kits left 🧪🥼👩‍🔬

We've been completely overwhelmed by the enthusiasm shown for this project and the number of new sign ups in the past 24 hrs. We now have more participants than sampling packs so the sign up form has been closed! Thanks so much to everyone who has signed up and shared!

A shoutout to Hylke Kortenbosch, @EvelineSnelders and the #mycology group at Wageningen U&R who designed the #airsampling method we will be using to collect airborne #Aspergillus spores this summer. Interested to compare UK data to Netherlands data when the results are in! #citizenscience

Today is sample pack making for our July sampling month! @isobelcstanton and Jennifer Shelton are being assisted by two Larkmead School work experience students - lucky for us, unlucky for them. 😂 First of 40 packs is assembled and ready for posting! ✉️ #citizenscience #aspergillus

40 #citizenscience sampling packs will be on their way out with this afternoon’s post! 🙌🏼 If you’re expecting one, keep an eye out for it on Friday or Saturday. 😊 If anything is missing from your pack (there’s a checklist) please let @isobelcstanton or Jennifer Shelton know asap. 😊

Great to see sampling packs have been arriving this weekend ready for July sampling! If you have not received your pack by Tuesday (20th) please let us know and we will send out another one. ✉️

Here are Jennifer Shelton’s air samplers out in the wild! We’d love to see other MARAf participant’s air samplers in situ if you’re happy to share. 😊 For a reminder how to setup, check out our YouTube video: m.youtube.com/watch?v=8D-6cI…

Ours are up in the house and garden too 👍 MARAf UK

This lunchtime I set up a couple of spore traps for MARAf UK "Monitoring for azole-resistant Aspergillus fumigatus (MARAf)", a project at UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology Imperial College London The Open University & Niab funded by Natural Environment Research Council.

We have a new leaflet. 1 of 2. lisa nwankwo #aspergillosis

Weekend 2 of sampling - this time it’s burying your fabric strip! youtu.be/7RqXVnU25hs

Sticky plate seals re-covered and BioGrowis flat-packed, soil samples collected & fabric strip (what’s left of it!) exhumed. Interested to see what #Aspergillus these grow for MARAf UK! The outdoor air sampler was rather grimier than the indoor sampler, I’m relieved to say. 😉

33 of 42 sampling packs returned already! Within 4 days of sampling month ending - you guys are on fire! 🔥 Today we were cleaning soil/compost off the fabric strips, submerging them in ethanol to cease microbial activity and heat-drying them ready for tensile strength testing.

bbc.co.uk/news/uk-englan…

MARAf team meet at Imperial College London White City campus (what a view!) today for sample swap and protocol standardisation. 🥼🧫 #Aspergillus #environmentalsampling #citizenscience

Jen has been throwing away her PhD plates to make space for the MARAf plates, now that plating has begun!

And so it begins! Our first attempt at making Flamingo media 🦩(what a fabulous colour!) and culturing from “air samplers” using Hylke Kortenbosch approach. #Aspergillus #mycology

Back in the lab - picking mould for MARAf UK - and remembering why I enjoyed my #PhD so much. 😊 #LabWork #Aspergillus #AMR

A well-behaved plate on the right versus a “what on Earth happened there?!” plate on the left! A sneak peek at the drug-resistant isolates growing from the outdoor air samples. 😬 #Aspergillus #AMR #CitizenScience