World Wood Interactive Exhibition

Our Materials + Microbes Column is itself an experiment. Filled with diverse wood species from all over the world, layered to allow the movement of air from the exhibition to wash over the wood surfaces and deposit the microbes of visitors and Venice, we will examine the change in microbial community composition over time. To observe this, we used flocked swabs moistened with phosphate buffered saline and carefully swabbed the surfaces of each wood plank before packaging in Eugene, Oregon and sending to Italy. At the conclusion of the exhibition, the wood planks will be carefully wrapped and sent to University of Oregon for follow-up swabbing and processing in the BioBE wet lab, prior to genomic sequencing. Our hypothesis is that the wood density will impact microbial recovery and wood species will impact microbial viability and composition.