That's about 6 liters of Rhodospirillum rubrum growing photosynthetically at 30° C. It's an odd bug. It grows photosynthetically without oxygen (notice that the bottles are filled right up to the top), or with oxygen in the dark, but if it has both oxygen and light at the same time, it dies. Haven't quite figured out the adaptive value of that one yet.
Sadly, about 6 hours after this picture was taken, all of those lovely cells had been reduced to a green scum dried on the bottom of one test tube. On the plus side, the data we got out of it was good, and now we know more than we did before. Go Science!
2 comments:
That's not science!
Where are the tesla coils and arcing bits of electricity and hunchbacked man-servants?
And in that whole blog entry you didn't cackle with maniacal glee once.
C'mon, Mike, what kind of shoddy outfit are you working for over there?
Dang it! You've discovered my dirty little secret. I'm not actually a mad scientist at all. The best I can usually manage is being a little bit peeved, but then it passes.
But seriously, man, everyone knows you only need Tesla coils if you're creating life. My little bugs are already alive. I'll take a picture of the electroporator sometime for you, though; that has arcing bits of electricity every now and then.
I do need to work on building up my army of minions. Rob Green had an undergrad named Igor once.
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