This is rather sudden. Acidophilic #Halobacteria mutant used for our long term evolution study (4 years and ongoing!) suddenly lost the ability to float. Floating phenotype is still exhibited by control strain. #microbiology

Halobacterial kitchen media - based off ATCC 213, swapping components with table+epsom salt, food grade KCl + CaCl2, with milk and soy powder (need to filter after) does work, as well as just boiling fish/non-oil canned tuna (1/L) and mixing with 250g/L table salt. #microbiology #halobacteria

Quick note & protocol on 3 year old Halobacteria culture sent out for sequencing last Friday. Results expected mid-March, hoping to publish in our biology zine Willowlands :

https://naturepoker.wordpress.com/2023/02/26/halobacteria-mutant-sequencing-3-years-in/

#sequencing #halobacteria #microbiology #evolutionarybiology #amateurbiology

Tabulated our mutant Halobacteria growth data dating back to February 2020 - it looks like our next sequencing data will come in at 13832nd generation since keeping record. Not as much as I thought, but then that's still about 345k years in human terms.

#sequencing #halobacteria #microbiology #evolutionarybiology

First #Halobacteria transfer of 2023- part of a 3 year long experiment so far. There will be another sequencing this Feb, really excited to see what sort of mutations/shufflings were introduced. I'll write up something for the Willowlands with the new data #archaea #microbiology