SCIENCE

YEAR 8 ELMS SCIENCE EXCURSION TO MELBOURNE MUSEUM

On Monday 4 December we went to the Melbourne Museum to visit The Mind and Gut Feelings exhibits to explore how our minds, guts and microbes are inextricably linked. We learnt how our brains are the most complex structure in the universe with over 100 billion neurons, and how our gut flora ecosystem (our microbiome) relates to an overall healthy gut.

 

Part of this excursion asked us to investigate Faecal Microbiota Transplantation (FMT), which is the transplantation of a healthy human donor’s microbiome into a recipient to help treat a range of digestive diseases. We learnt that researchers are currently investigating the use of FMT to help treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s disease. It was interesting to see how the theory we’re learning in class is applied in the real world.

 

Praneetha Madineedi

Year 8 Student