07-12-04 07:12
No 518910
Hey,
There's some sort of hype that ergot will kill you. Afaik if someone had a paspali strain in liquid culture, the ergotism is caused by ergotamine/ergocristine alkaloids in high amounts. First up, nobody would ingest raw paspali sludge, so why is all the output sterility required? Why do people put h2o2/bleach bubblers/hepa filters on the output exhaust? afaik only putting sterile air in to ensure no contamination of medium and positive air flow would take care of the rest, no? Container + hepa on air input + water bubbler on output (just incase anything is airborne but nothing should be.) should suffice, no?
(Hive Bee)
07-12-04 18:54
No 519029
I agree with you. The only danger that ergot proposes from what i've heard is ergotism from actually consuming the fruit bodies of the claviceps purpurea/paspali nasty alkaloidal make-up that in high doses as said causes constrictive blood flow to the legs; in some cases leading to amputation of the limb. During 'St.Anthony's Fire'there were several cases of females inflicted w/ the malady that as a result had an unintended abortion of their child premature unborn child due to the side effects of convulsive uterine contractions ergot poisoning causes. I certainly agree that you would not need the type of air filtration device for circulation in a chamber housing paspali cultures. I'd love to hear otherwise, afterall I don't wanna hurt anyone that could potentially help pick up where pickard left off ;)
'A Helpful Bee, is a Friend Indeed'
(Hive Bee)
07-13-04 10:05
No 519127
I think for safety reasons only the exhaust would need to be bleachwater-locked just incase any freak spores or mycellium manages to get airborn, as to stop innoculation of the human body :)
In regards to sterile air input, an ergot culture guide on lycaeum doesnt use hepa filter, or anything, on the input. just pumps air into the innoculation solution thru cotton wool. is this sterile enough? SWIM seems to think that liquid culture medium that is uninoculated, fed with air passed thru cotton wool, would contam pretty fast because spores would get through. correct SWIM if he's wrong plz.
(Chief Bee)
07-13-04 10:40
No 519128
is this sterile enough?
Cotton-filtered air may be dust-free, but it is certainly not sterile. It will filter out houseflies and mosquitoes, but not spores and bacteria.
The Hive - Clandestine Chemists Without Borders
(Guardian)
07-13-04 13:21
No 519165
The point of exhaust sterility is not to keep the people around the reactor safe (of course there are execptions to every rule), it is to keep what is in the reactor in a controlled, sterile environment. That means taking sterility measures on the backside "exhaust" end also, even with positive pressure and sterile filtration devices on the intake, if your backside exhaust is not at least half as sterile as the intake, the frontside sterility measures are fruitless, IMO.
If you think that there is not too much air contamination where your reactor is think again, unless you are operating in a classified clean room
. Even still reactors that operate in class 100 clean rooms are fitted with sterile filters on the front and back sides.Of course I am sure the sensitivities of reactions can be highly variable depending on what you are doing. I am not familiar with ergot, but I am a control freak so I would probably treat it with the highest degree of sterility possible, Of course I have been known to be too sterile at times.
I just think it would be advantagous to be able to control exactly what goes into your reactor, and remember that you could have the highest degree of sterility on your frontside and the whole reactor could become contaminated because of what got in from the exhaust.
As far as waterlocks go, they work good for making beer but I am not sure how well they work for other applications. I am sure there is someone here that has much more experience than I that could answer that question, hell it may have already been answered before
just feel like ranting,
m_e
Unipolar Mania, It's good for life...
(Hive Bee)
07-15-04 09:55
No 519603
Is there any way to achieve sterile air without a HEPA filter?
I thought of bleach bubbling on input but you have the problem of bleach carrying over and destroying the mycellium. Thought of using a bleach bubbler into a drying tube but at up to 2 weeks fermentation time, swim thinks thats a fkload of damprid meaning a rediculously big drying tube.
Can anyone suggest how big an air pump you'd need to do this? All i can find is that it needs 80% air concentration in water, so i guess thats constant bubbles. is the container volume * 10 (L/per hour) enough?
(Guardian)
07-15-04 13:01
No 519639
AFAIK many of the air filtration devices in use for reactors, and fermenatations and the like are not truly HEPA filters but are .2 micron filters that utilize pore size instead of HEPA filtration. I believe Rhodi mentioned in a recent thread about acro disks, well these are made by the same people Acro, which I believe may be a subsidiary of Gelman (not sure) I know they both manufacture sterile filters. They are quite cheap also, you can pick up a .2micron filter for in-line air sterilization for about $1.00 USD.
regards,
m_e
Unipolar Mania, It's good for life...
(Newbee)
07-15-04 13:27
No 519644
high intensity uv - to sterilise air - and yes ergot will send you nuts and quite possibly kill you - after the ants have crawled under your skin...........
(Hive Bee)
07-15-04 20:09
No 519690
Another way is to use the negative ion generator check out: Post 444531 (Vitus_Verdegast: "Swim was thinking of constructing a glovebox,...", Tryptamine Chemistry)
Hippler