White Yeti - 16-9-2012 at 18:27
In many cases, biosynthesis requires the use or harvest of living organisms. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just walk into a store and ask something
along the lines of:
"Good afternoon, where may I find spores of Ashbya gossypii?"
or,
"Excuse me sir, but would you happen to have a liquid culture of Clostridium acetobutylicum by any chance?"
Some species can be purchased because a part of their life cycle features extremely long shelf life. This is the case for Physarum
polycephalum which can be stored as sclerotium for up to two years under standard conditions.
Nevertheless, most of the time, if one wishes to use an organism for whatever purpose, he or she must go outside and find it. The problem with this is
that there is no guarantee that the organism you find and put into culture is exactly the organism that you set out to find.
I wanted to practice growing Physcomitrella patens, as I read that this organism has value in the production of pharmaceuticals.
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Genetic modification is far beyond my means, but I wanted to take the first step and culture it anyway. As it may turn out, I might not even have the
correct moss species.
Here are pictures of a sample of moss which I believed to be Physcomitrella patens. Upon closer inspection, the sporophyte doesn't seem to
match with pictures on the interwebs.
Any ideas as to what species this plant might be, if not the aforementioned one?
The last picture has the gametophyte on top and the sporophyte on the bottom.
If anyone else is having trouble identifying an organism, whether macroscopic or microscopic, feel free to post pictures along with an appropriate
scale.