S2E02 - Gut Check (Microbiome)

#Microbiome #GutCheck #SciComm #Dysbiosis #Antibiotics #Probiotics #GameDesign #BoardGames #Science  Overview In this episode we talk with Dr. David Coil, microbiome scientist and the creator of Gut Check. We talk about microbiome health, antibioics, probiotics, prebiotics, game design considerations, and how the game's origin includes cheerleaders and the International Space Station.  Timestamps 0:00 Introduction 1:17 Microbiome body odor & sweat 4:47 Gut Check overview 10:45 Microbiome science 17:02 Antibiotics and phage therapy 23:05 Prebiotics and Probiotics 26:59 Game history & design 41:52 Giving the game away 47:01 Grades & final thoughts Links Gut Check print-and-play website and FAQ (microbe.net), plus  scientific paper (PLoS Biology) Microbes make your body odor (Scientific Reports) The Joy of Sweat (book; Goodreads) Bacteriophage (Wikipedia) Jason's "Mighty Microbes" cards (by Zymo) The Landlord's Game (Wikipedia)  Find our socials at https://www.gamingwithscience.net This episode of Gaming with Science™ was produced with the help of the University of Georgia and is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. Full Transcript (Some platforms truncate the transcript due to length restrictions. If so, you can always find the full transcript on https://www.gamingwithscience.net/) Brian  0:06  Hello and welcome to the gaming with science podcast where we talk about the science behind some of your favorite games. Jason  0:12  Today, we'll be talking about gut check published by Qiagen. All right. Welcome back, everyone. This is Jason.  Brian  0:20  This is Brian,  Jason  0:21  and we have another special guest on today, Dr David Coil. David, would you please introduce yourself? David  0:26  Hi. Thank you guys so much for having me on the show. My name is David Coil. Right now. I'm the program manager for a National Science Foundation funded center on pandemic Insights, where we study what we call the pre emergence phase of pandemics, which is viruses circulating in animals that might jump to people and cause problems. Brian  0:45  Very cool. Maybe we should have had you on the other game. We didn't know. Jason  0:48  Hey, we can't have everyone on the pandemic episode. We have to spread them around. I'm sure there will be other disease related games we can go over.  Brian  0:55  Yeah, probably  Jason  0:56  anyway. So David, we wanted to get on here. Because not only is he an avid gamer and scientist, he's actually the chief creator of gut check, which we're going to be going over today.  Brian  1:07  Yay.  Jason  1:08  This is less going to be an interview. We mostly want to talk the science, but we do want to get some insights from you about the making of the game, the things involved in that. But mostly we want to talk about microbiome science before we get to that, though, we would like to start off with some cool science fact. As our guests, we give you the first choice. If you have some cool science fact you've learned lately, you can share it. Otherwise, I'm sure Brian has something to share. David  1:27  It's funny, I actually tried to think of something. But in the spaces I work in, all of my science facts are depressing for a fun I mean, Brian  1:37  we just did a paleontology game. And you know, they always point out that the best Paleontology is founded by tragedy, so  David  1:45  fair enough. Brian  1:46   Uh, well, I did find something. And maybe this is not depressing, but possibly entertaining. I usually try to theme them. So this is the microbiome of underarm odor.  Jason  1:57  This sounds like it's heading for an ignobel Brian  2:00  No, not at all that you would be amazed at how many studies there are. I don't know. I maybe you wouldn't. I'm not sure. Okay, so underarm odor is not produced by your underarm. It is produced by the breakdown of things that come out of your apocrine glands, by the microbes that live in your underarm. T