A crash course in changing the world.
luciferase bacteria
there are night lights on in friends' rooms. constantly on. a slow, steady, painful trickle of energy leak from each one.
so a buddy and i went down to the lab and cultured everyone a couple plates of luciferase bacteria!
this means they glow in the dark as they metabolize. the bacteria use quorum sensing to activate their little glow enzymes, so when a big enough cluster of them grow emerge... bling!
they aren't that bright, more like a faint smear of stars across the culture plate. but a big plate gets a decent enough glow on and its so nifty no one uses their night lights anymore :)
(disclaimer: all bacteria were rigorously tested for for nasty side effects through the scientifically sounds technique of smearing them on the back of my hand. hey, it's my lab, no one tells me how to do science)
Views: 8
Tags: bacteria, energy, science, transgenics
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Comment by glim on March 23, 2010 at 4:17pm
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right now i just replate them, after reading all your amazing comments, i have been thinking about other ideas to maintain them. if the bacteria were cultured on a tube of cheesecloth or filter paper inside a glass tube, then the top could be opened and the tube refilled with TSB (tryplicate soy broth used in labs) or even a simple chicken or beef broth (with the fat removed). they cheesecloth would act as a solid medium and the broth pouring method would be more user friendly then learning how to mix agar with liquid medium, autoclaving, etc... i had a bunch in a jar of chicken broth and they were viable for roughly 4 weeks before i felt they needed new food.
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