Microbiology in action

Recently the shower in our apartment started to get this salmon-pink scum on the tile and curtain. At first I thought it was something in either my or my roommate’s soap or shampoo, or these cheap apartment showers. But the pink stuff increased its territory, and I thought of some sort of bacterial or fungal growth.

Luckily for my roommate, I’ve seen my share of bacterial and fungal colonies in microbiology lab this year, and I knew that red pigment = Serratia marcescens, a lovely opportunistic pathogen that lives in our urinary and digestive tracts, and causes problems for people in the hospital.

I guess that’s as far as that bit of knowledge took me, because after that I just scrubbed it off with some all-purpose disinfectant. Which I could have done anyway whether or not I knew what it was.

Tags: bacteria, Serratia marcescens, shower