Academics Andre's Research Biocuriosities Books Graduate School History of Science Hot off the Press Igor's Research Interdisciplinarity Molecule of the Month Open Access Philip's Research Philosophy of Science Physics Physicsworld.com
Backreaction Ceclia's Blog at PHD Comics Cocktail Party Physics Cosmic Variance The Daily Transcript Easternblot Everyday Scientist The Evilutionary Biologist Freelancing Science The Futile Cycle Good Math, Bad Math iMechanica in singulo Incoherently Scattered Ponderings Juniorprof Klara Stefflova Life of a Lab Rat The Loom Metadatta Mixed States Morning Coffee Physics Not Even Wrong Notes from the biomass Notional Slurry OpenScience Project Pharyngula PLoS Blog Ponderings of a fool Recombinants The Sandwalk SciAm Observations ScienceBlogs Scientific Clearing House Shtetl-Optimized Three-toed Sloth Uncertain Principles What's New by Bob Park
BioCurious indeed. I was cleaning out my old plates from the fridge this afternoon, and came across this fine specimen (pictures are from the top and through the agar, respectively).
The black dot in the middle of the second picture there is curious, as it seems to lie on one of my streak lines. Anyone have any ideas what it might be?
Whatever it is, it either ignores ampicillin, or the amp has long since stopped working. I should also mention that these plates have been sitting in the fridge since the June 2nd.
Protein unfolding as a wormlike chain? A Note to Conference Organizers
Biocurious is written by Andre Brown and Philip Johnson, since 2005. Content of the weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
The amp is dead—rule of thumb is one month cold and dark, a few days any other conditions—and the Thing is probably fungus of some sort. I don’t actually know how to be certain without either microscopy or waiting to see if it develops spores/fruiting bodies/filaments/whatever.
The red pigmentation reminds me of prodigiosin, a red pigment made by the genus of bacteria Serratia. But I’d agree it looks more like a fungus, and your Ap has probably had it.
As a general rule of thumb, make some glycerol sticks and streak out onto fresh ApLBA every time you want to use your bug.
I would appreciate your comments about theoretical biology, re: Mohammed AlQ.:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/08/mohammed-alquraishi-on-theory-of.html
The amp should be fine. The color is the same that yeast have when they have a problems with adenine metabolism. Some bug mutated and can resist amp, but is very sick :)
Why not stain a bit and look at it under a microscope?