Protists and Education

Protists in Virtual Reality

PlanktoMania is an outreach initiative focused on marine protists and their role in oceanic ecosystems (http://planktomania.org/). Based on reconstructed 3D models, it essentially uses augmented and virtual reality technologies. All resources provided for download from the website (e.g. card game, 3D printing ready file, etc…) are free and under a creative commons license CC-BY-NC-SA. Launched in 2016, the website is currently available in French, English, Spanish and Czech and has regular addition of new content. Check the Google Play and Apple App Store for the AR and VR apps. Contact: fabrice.not@sb-roscoff.fr

PlanktoQuest (https://photosymbiosis.com/planktoquest/) is complementary and goes one step further. PlanktoQuest is a new virtual reality animation to explore and manipulate marine plankton with hands. To build PlanktoQuest, we used 3D models of different phytoplankton (microalgae) including their organelles (chloroplast, mitochondrion, nucleus) that were generated with 3D electron microscopy. You can stretch, dissect, and feed different plankton as well as enter inside them with just your hands and a headset (no computer, no controllers). The new release now includes one part with all the PlanktoMania plankton models and a second part with phytoplankton. PlanktoQuest is freely available on the MetaQuest Store. Contact: johan.decelle@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr

A Collaborative Metabarcoding Course on Microbial Eukaryotes in Prague

A new practical block course dedicated to analyzing the environmental diversity of microbial eukaryotes was held for 10 days in November 2024 at the BIOCEV research infrastructure in Prague, Czech Republic. The course was funded by the 4EU+ European University Alliance and the private companies Oxford Nanopore Technologies and Avantor. Tutors from Charles University, Sorbonne Université, and the University of Warsaw guided 12 participants (students from the participating universities) through the steps of two metabarcoding pipelines: one based on Illumina sequencing of the V4 region of 18S rRNA and the other on Oxford Nanopore sequencing of the rRNA operon. Students collected and analyzed sequence data and presented the results of their statistical analyses at the end of the course. This course is part of the curriculum of the Protistology Master’s program at Charles University and of the Master’s program at the University of Warsaw. The organizers plan to hold this course at least every two years.