Day 1
This is a tough challenge; it’s very interesting, too, but I’m a bit worried about a couple of things.
First, Mike L and I don’t get on too well, but we both like good challenges. In the next three days, we are really going to have to focus on the work at hand, putting aside everything else. I guess this is why science is such a good cross-over sport - what I mean is people from different cultures, different religions, different languages, different perspectives can often work together if they share a common goal. Science and/or figuring out things often carries a common goal with it. I’m just going to take a deep breath, get over it and do good work. I expect that Mike L will do the same. Heck, making a microbiology lab out here will be quite a trip.
In college I laughed when we were handed agar plates. I always wanted to eat them because in high school, when I was an exchange student to Bogor, Indonesia, we would eat agar with coconut milk and other flavorings. I loved it. The texture was amazing. It was soft, but firm, I could separate the flavored layers with my tongue. It is like playing with Wisconsin string cheese!
It took me seven months to finally understand what agar was - a seaweed algae that has been cooked down. The polymer chains (carbon chains) in agar change their structure depending on their environment. Basically, when the seaweed is in calm or deep water, the polymer structure of agar is a soft gel, allowing nutrients to be absorbed into the seaweed. When the tide goes out and the seaweed is exposed (and bashed by waves hitting them and rocks), the polymer structures in agar change; they add sulfate groups which cause cross-linking. In any case, the gel becomes firmer and protective.
Our goal is to induce the hard gel properties, so we have a firm medium on which bacteria can grow. The food industry often uses agar in the soft gel form to make foods smooth and creamy.
It isn’t any seaweed that forms agar, however. It is a red seaweed, that often looks brown - just my luck - and looks like it has two-fingered hands at its tips. This is nuts. I’ll just have to go diving to see if I can find some.
Dr. Fran Hanzawa, a professor of mine while I was at Grinnell College, once told me her Major Professor told her to go find seedlings of Trillium grandiflorum. He didn’t know what they looked like, but she should go find some. This is how I feel, even though I have a clue as to what the seaweed looks like - I have a whole ocean to search.
Day 2
I found the right seaweed (Chondrus crispus). I’ve boiled it up (and boiled it and boiled it). I never realized how much biology and chemistry depend on heat. Heat causes reactions and speeds up reactions. We’ve got gel to add bacteria to. The meat broth I made is to give the bacteria nutrients so they can multiply.
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