Well, my culture of bacteria from the dead crab in salt water proved pretty awful. Lots of bacteria, but such an awful smell that I'm basically banned from the house from doing similar cultures. The worst smells come from clostridium, and I'm sure I hit the jackpot with it. It creates such wonderful chemicals as cadaverine, putrescine, ammonia, butyric acid, and hydrogen sulfide. So the smell of rotting corpses filled my house. My wife is still not talking to me.

I'm guessing once I finish staining the slide I'll find some vibrio hemolyticus, whose habitat is marine animals and can jump to humans. It's a major cause of gastroenteritis in Japan. A bigger danger is vibrio cholerae, the cause of cholera, but I'm pretty sure its environment is fresh, not marine water.

So I got a bit worried I wasn't as sterile as I should be, so I triple sealed the samples in plastic containers, ziplocs, and garbage bags and used alcohol and lysol to rub down everything I was in contact with and all lab surfaces.

Time to go work in a real lab I think.


- posted by Aargau @ 3:17 PM