{"id":310,"date":"2011-11-28T08:02:50","date_gmt":"2011-11-28T12:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/?p=310"},"modified":"2011-11-28T15:05:37","modified_gmt":"2011-11-28T19:05:37","slug":"monday-28-november-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/2011\/11\/28\/monday-28-november-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday, 28 November 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

07:02 –<\/span> Barbara arrived home in the early afternoon yesterday. As usual, Colin and I did our happy dance. One of us was so excited, he peed. I’m not saying which.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I was working on the fungi\/lichens chapter yesterday when I nearly took leave of my senses. The “standard” stain for fungi, which also serves as a mounting medium, is called lactophenol cotton blue or LPCB for short. It’s what I would use for staining fungi, no question. There are other stains that work, but not as well.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

So, I decided I needed to include LPCB in the biology kit. I actually started tracking down sources for the chemicals and pricing everything. One of the components–phenol, AKA carbolic acid–is tightly regulated by DOT for shipping, so I made sure that I could ship under the small-quantity exemption, which indeed I could. Then I finally came to my senses. Phenol is truly nasty stuff, and LPCB is essentially a 20% solution of phenol in glycerin and lactic acid, with some water and a small amount of dye added. Phenol is highly toxic, absorbed through the skin, and corrosive. Making matters worse, phenol is a local anesthetic, so you don’t even feel it as it eats through your skin and poisons you. Not something I or any sane person wants an inexperienced 15-year-old student messing with.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

So, turning lemons into lemonade, I decided to have students test the various other stains already included in the kit to determine their effects on fungi. Safranin O is actually not a bad alternative to LPCB, but I won’t tell them that. Let them find out for themselves.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

14:05 –<\/span> Yesterday I linked to a YouTube version of The British Grenadiers. The Grenadiers were and are scary guys, no doubt about it. Over the last 350 years or so, they’ve helped Britain win more than a few battles. But for some really, really scary guys, check out the Biochemist Grenadiers<\/a>. These guys and their colleagues in the other sciences win wars and topple empires. You want these guys as friends.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

If you’re not a scientist, you may find the lyrics incomprehensible. Don’t worry. It’s not just you. Here a few lines of the lyrics:
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The moiety of glucose, in the succeeding phase<\/span>
\nIs transferred to a ketose by an isomerase<\/span>
\nPhosphofructokinase now, acts on that F6P;<\/span>
\nFructose 1,6 bisphosphate is the product that’s set free.<\/span><\/p>\n

The kinase is effected quite complicatedly<\/span>
\nAnd as you’ll have suspected it uses ATP;<\/span>
\nFBP by aldolase is split reversibly<\/span>
\nTo phosphoglyceraldehyde, also DHAP.<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s good to be a geek.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

07:02 – Barbara arrived home in the early afternoon yesterday. As usual, Colin and I did our happy dance. One of us was so excited, he peed. I’m not saying which.\n<\/p>\n

I was working on the fungi\/lichens chapter yesterday when I nearly took leave of my senses. The “standard” stain for fungi, which also serves as a mounting medium, is called lactophenol cotton blue or LPCB for short. It’s what I would use for staining fungi,<\/p>\n

 » Read more about: Monday, 28 November 2011  »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,6,16,11,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barbara","category-biology","category-dogs","category-science-kits","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ttgnet.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}