Feb 11, 2009
Microbiology, i.e. Potions With Snape
For one liter of Bennett’s Agar, combine:
10g potato starch
2g casaaminoacids
1.8g yeast extract
2mL Czapek Mineral Mix
I’m at lab, making growth medium for bacteria so I can run some ultra-modern, computerized, high-throughput experiments. But I like to imagine that I’m actually at Hogwarts. And that I’m not putting in potato starch, but extract of toad’s wart instead. Yeah, that’s right. I’m not working on my thesis. I’m getting ready to poison your ass.
as a sidenote, i’ve always enjoyed making LB cos it smells like something called ‘Brand’s Essence of Chicken’ which all Singaporeans drink before exams to have eyepopping alertness and stupendous intelligence.
unfortunately, everyone else in america thought it smelled gross. i was a happy sniffer though.
our cold room is stacked with hundreds of plates of agar teeming with streptomyces, and it has a strange, chemically sweet smell which I love. I can’t agree with you on the LB though…my memories of it are spoiled by 2 months of lugging around 5L flasks of E. coli in Lausanne (and you know how that smells).
perhaps streptomyces is an ancestor. like how babies like how their moms smell.
(: