Unseen Images: Third place

The competition's third place goes to Thomas Wilmott from the University of Liverpool with his piece titled 'The Mersey Microbiome: A Winogradsky column made from Mersey water and mud'.

A picture of a jar containing water from the River Mersey, egg yolk, and newsparer on a window ledge overlooking Liverpool against a navy blue background with a bronze 3rd place in the top right corner

"Mersey water and mud was supplemented with egg yolk (sulphur source) and the Liverpool Echo newspaper (carbon source) and a multivitamin tablet. The column was left in the sun for five weeks. The result is various concentration gradients, with Cyanobacteria and algae near the the oxygen rich top, the middle filled with purple photosynthetic bacteria (e.g. Chromatium), next the phototrophic green sulphur bacteria (e.g. Chlorobium) and the bottom with fermative bacterium (e.g. Clostridium)." - Thomas Wilmott