Frogs are cute and useful: Let’s save them.

This week came with heartening news in the frog world. An Australian study showed that if you offer frogs a sauna in a greenhouse, it allows them to recover from the fungal disease that has played a role in 90 species extinctions so far. The greatest loss of biodiversity ever attributed to a single disease, the fungus in question is Batrachochytrium dedrobatidis, not-so-fondly-nicknamed Bd, and it infects the skin, needed in frogs for breathing. This causes electrolyte imbalance and eventually fatal heart attacks. Bd lives in the soil and water and threatens amphibians worldwide.

Sadly, we can’t give every frog a sauna or anti-fungal treatment, but there are other possibilities. My friend Anne Madden runs the Microbe Institute, where she’s been spreading the word about a bacterium  (Janthinobacterium lividum) that can fight the fungus by producing a purple pigment called violacein. There are other bacteria that produce the same anti-fungal medicine, but we don’t know how many and where they live.

So the Institute is launching a citizen science project whereby you will soon be able to test your local waters and send them any purple-pigmented bacteria samples you find. A grant from National Geographic Society also supports a lesson plan on bioinformatics, PCR and DNA sequencing for a range of students, so they can learn while they save the frogs.

But that’s not all: what’s really captured my heart is Anne’s BioArt project, a collaboration between beneficial microbes and humans, modeled after the AIDS quilt. It turns out that in addition to saving the amphibian world, that purple pigment can dye fabric naturally, without a water-intensive setting agent.

The Microbe Institute will send you a scrap of the microbe-dyed purple fabric (they’ve sent me a lovely strip of delicate purple lace) to include in a square paper art tile. We’re to use the symbiotic glory of the bacterium/frog relationship as our inspiration, and our squares will be incorporated into a vast collage. Do join me in creating against destruction.

As for Anne, her passion for science is rivaled only by her talent for millinery. Check out her Microbe Hat project and spot those purple microbes at work in some of its creations.