h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

jim, our residential college bathrooms have been the sanctuary for a multitude of different moulds and bacteria dating back to the time the college was built! judging by how long they've been proliferating there, i'd say that they've probably learnt to harness nuclear energy by now.

hussassan - re: ethanol - that would of course depend on the concentration of your alcohol! our second year was fun, because we got to transform our lab into a microbe kitchen, and it wasn't just food for microbes. my microbial physiology lecturer has an *awesome* fermenter in his lab, and his lab practicals (he offers mic phys yearly) always include beer production - which the students would always get to bring home and drink. speaking of which, would you like our recipe for sauerkraut?

i would have enjoyed viewing the apparatus that you describe ... im currently training a large colony of bacteria to consume the contents of a leftover pasty in my kitchen... they are doin a fantastic job ... and im lookin 4 further research material as we speak ..

i once kept bread mould as pets in university. i kept them in a nice little tupperware container with a slice of bread, and watched them grow over the course of two months. it's quite cool, really: first you see this pristine white slice of bread, and then a green stain appears out of nowhere, which then spreads to cover the entire slice... growing greener and more densely packed with rhizopus hyphae, which eventually leaves the bread and starts growing on the walls of the box. and it changes colour too, from green to orange.

it got to the point where i had to throw away the container because i didn't know what kind of nameless horror i would unleash upon the world by opening the box. pandora probably never thought of all that.

Did you not have a white stage first (slightly harder to see)?

yup, had that. eventually however, the entire container became so fungus-infested that it was impossible to see anything inside without taking off the lid, which i wasn't quite brave enough to do just in case mutated strains of arthrobotrys cannoides were lurking inside and seized me the moment i opened the container

maybe we should put bread mould up for adoption here, along with some other food-friendly microbes, no?

yes i would like to sponsor a home 4 stray bread consumming bacteria ...please sign me up

Farlander - Yeah, my sister and I once did that too, except we used a piece of cake. We threw it away years ago, and I think that its denizens have now discovered the Ultimate Question.

jumbojim - I support you entirely.

as i suffer from reverse paranoia and think everyone is trying to help me .. i wonder if its possible to re-create the bread in a plastic container experiment without any help or instruction from your good self mr farlander ..

re: bread experiment - well, make sure you keep this community updated, for the sake of fellow researchers who are not willing to sacrifice one plastic container/one slice of bread/at least fourteen days gazing into the said container!

in the meantime, maybe we should plan more experiments using other types of food. would anyone like to volunteer? i hope you all have read the write-up on the 'stinky meat' project, by the way (no, it wasn't done by me; i'm not brave enough to host a microbe party like that in *my* backyard) - it should serve as a source of inspiration.

we will commence said experiment on monday 9th ... with reports being posted at regular intervals ...

Someone put a stop to the mould I'd been growing this year. They came round yesterday and insisted on washing some things up(!) - including the jar it was in. That's not as bad as the time my aunt threw away the whole batch of real lemonade though which my mother had just put a lot of effort into making specially. That was because the aunt was being officious in the kitchen and thought it was dirty dishwater!

sef - that's a handy excuse for when one is too lazy to do the dishes: 'it's not that i don't want to wash them; they're part of my experiment for growing microorganisms from food sources!' i'll try that the next time someone accuses me of being a sloth.

(speaking of dishwater - my mum was really sick for some time when i was in 6th grade. for about a week or so, i'd come home from school, go to the kitchen, and make her a thermos of hot chocolate. it wasn't until about ten years later that she confessed to me that she'd drunk it only because she didn't want to hurt my feelings, because it was *really bad* - lukewarm, and both looked and tasted like drainwater )

did you get to put the mould under a microscope before they threw it away? and was it still rhizopus, or had something else taken over?

Oh no, the mould wasn't the excuse for not doing the dishes. The dishes were mould free anyway and I had already done a couple of tubs full but was curious to see how the stuff in the jar would develop. So I was in no particular hurry to continue and instead moved it to one side.

It was in the green fuzzy stage but wasn't spreading as fast as I thought it might. Presumably the "growth medium" or circumstances didn't suit it. I think the de-humidifier which had been on for part of the time may have made the air drier than it preferred.

would you believe it, we once managed to get bacteria to grow in liquid decontamination agents? we got a nice healthy growth in 10% clorox and lysol, and a happy proliferation of them in commercial dettol! (it was in a second-year class to determine the efficacy of common cleaning agents) we were, of course, mystified - until we learnt the terms 'bacterial stress' and 'exopolysaccharide'.

to the members: time to drag out your household cleaners and test 'em...

I already knew Dettol was pretty useless!

dettol was the worst! we did a dilution test to compare the efficacy of the disinfectants - and dettol at 100% strength (neat) was still capable of harbouring - nay, *supporting, nurturing* - microbes! imagine swabbing your wounds with it...

just to let you know that i've updated the news and announcements pages. more microbe news!

cheers,
far.

hi its me jumbo jim ... come back for more ...
unfortunateley ive been in a sterile
environment for some time .. my operation was a success
im now free to play with lots of nasty bugs n stuff
lets begin... the bottle of milk left in my fridge ...
very nasty ... wasnt brave enuff 4 that !!!

I'm glad to hear that your operation went well

So are you working on your bread mould project, or are you summoning up the courage to open your milk bottle?

HINT: One of my friends once left yoghurt in his car for a couple of hours - in the hot sun - before taking it indoors. The container exploded, expelling foul-smelling gunk all over his kitchen table.

Ah, the often underrated yoghurt bomb.