Last Wednesday, as soon as I
arrived to Evocative, my mentor put me straight to work. We headed immediately
to the lab to make agar plates that the mushrooms grow on. Before entering, I
had to completely sterilize myself. To do this, I had to exchange my ugg boots
for sanitized crocs, wear a lab coat, put on top of my lab coat clear sleeve
covering for each arm, wear gloves, put on a hair net, and to top it all off, I
had to wear a face mask. All this to make sure no bacterium contaminates the
products. Even before I entered the lab I was already in awe.
The big thing that I learned on
last Wednesday was about the very topic of contamination and how to avoid it.
Even when working in the laminar flow hood transferring mycelial culture on the
cooled agar plates my mentor constantly called me out for waving my arm—which
was protected by a lab coat and a
protective sleeve over it and misted
with an alcoholic solution—over the plate that contained the mycelial culture.
She told me that each time I would either have to open and then close right
away the petri dish when transferring the culture to a fresh plate or find my
own way that does not involve waving back and forth my arm over the colonized
plate. Courtney informed that each time she makes plates, she makes at least 20
so that she knows the results she obtains are correct and not because of some
particular mutation. On that day, I made about 24 plates and for more than half
I was called out for. Tomorrow, I will get to see the results of the culture I
transferred and I expect very few to have turned out normally. Most I predict
will have soiled and formed a mold-like substance on them. By the end of my
stay there, I found myself cut off as my ride had arrived. There were simply an infinite number of things for me to do that my mentor had instructed me to simply
cut her off when it is time for me to leave. I can not wait to get back to
Ecovative and immerse myself amongst the busy scientists, engineers, designers,
and chemists that are too busy to even realize that they’ve missed lunch tomorrow!
Christi, thank you for a thorough and vivid blog post. I can clearly see you waving your arms and dropping little bits of contamination on the plates in my mind! I appreciate the challenge of sterile technique. It is amazing what can lead to contamination. Keep up the great effort!
ReplyDeleteWhoa, Christi! I'm so surprised by the level of "high security" Evocative requires! It sounds like contamination is the quintessential thing to avoid. I wonder if we could see any pictures contaminated mycelial culture. I'm curious about how different the normal culture would would be from the contaminated one. It would be also more interesting if you could give us a sneak-peek into Evocative via photos!
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