Microbiology and Immunology

Our food is grown in lakes, soil and seawater. These are the ultimate sources of our nutrients. I am looking for methods, if they exist, to use microorganisms to separate the compounds in these sources. I would like to produce a plant food that contains only compounds known to be nutrients for humans. The compounds known to be human nutrients are comprised on fewer than 30 elements. Every stable element in the periodic table is in soil, and some of them never leave our bodies without extraordinary medical procedures. Many late-onset medical conditions might be avoided by finding a low-cost way to ensure that what we feed our plants is not toxic to us. I have writte…

Hi guys, I have two questions about the preparation of bacterial freezer stock with beads.It is new for me. How can I make it?Can you indicate me the procedure/ steps to carry it out? When I have to streak the bacteria from the frozen beads , how is it better to do it? roll the beads on an agar plate or just use a loop to touch the beads and pass it on the plate? Thank you very much.

Hello! I was hoping someone on here could help me out with a project I'm currently working on. I work at a brewery and I'm working on creating a method and way to identify different species, potential pathogenicity and the best methods to keep the levels of unwanted bacteria low. What I'm looking for is what kind of supplies I need and any links/methods to perform liquid media culturing. I'm also interested in any tips on how to identify what methods of sanitation work best in an industrial environment. I have a few items already; agar, petri dishes, inoculation loops, slides, gram staining and sterile swabs. I need to create a shopping list of any items that I may ne…

I've been pondering on this for a while to no avail; google searches/immunology textbooks have also failed me. So to best explain this, lets use something popular like gluten. Gluten is known to cause auto-immune reactions. Makes sense due to genetic factors. However,it has no relationship to something like hair follicles, then how can gluten elicit an auto-immune response towards the hair follicles, causing hair thinning? Despite the fact that it has no relation to it? Would it be that the antigens of gluten and the hair follicle antigen share similar homology in their peptide structure? This would lead to the same response since the body is unable to disting…

Hemoglobin A has two alpha chains and two beta chains. Hemoglobin F has two alpha chains and two gamma chains. Hemoglobin Barts has four gamma chains. Suppose you had one antibody preparation that reacted solely with the gamma chains and a second antibody preparation that mainly consisted of antibodies which bind to gamma chains but which also had some antibodies that could bind to the alpha chain. Would these two behave differently in an Ouchterlony (double diffusion) experiment involving Hb F and Hb Barts in two adjacent wells? I think that they would. In the first case, you would see a smooth arc of precipitin from anti-HbF antibodies reacting with the gamma…

"Protein. The S-100 brain protein studied in these experiments was purified by Moore (1965) from bovine brain, and was kindly supplied by Dr. Blake Moore. Antiserum. Antibodies to bovine brain S-100 were successfully produced in rabbits after complexing the purified protein with methylated bovine serum albumin according to the method of Plescia et al. (1964) and using this complex as immunogen. The antiserum gave one major band in double-diffusion tests in agar with purified beef brain S-100 protein as antigen and, in addition, a second minor band with crude brain extract as antigen." This is a passage from a 1968 paper (Kessler D, Levine L and Fasman G, Biochemis…

Hello, what are CD3+/CD45+ cells? And CD3+ only? In percentage, what is a "normal" value for people with Leukemia? Thank you.

Hello everyone, My name is Ruben R. I have 21 years old and have been diagnosed with prostatitis. Did an MRI and they found it. I have been suffering from penile pain, anal pain (it's a relief everytime I have diarrhea because anal capsule gets empty and there is no compression on prostate). Did 3 urine cultures, sperm culture, all exames came back negative. All negative for STD's also. I'm in pain for 7 months already. My urologist prescribed me Bactrim (sulfonamides) and there was a relief after 3 days but on day 7, I did an allergic reaction and had to stop. He prescribed me Levofloxacin and I denied. Can't take it because of adversal side effects. Not an option. Took…

Does anybody have any idea as to why we catch 'cold'(flu) in winters (more commonly) than in summers? Viruses are supposedly non-functioning outside the body right? Are they affected by temperature? Please do help!

I have severe OCD and I used to think I was pretty educated on HIV and did not lose my mind fearing it the way I have now. Please keep in mind before reading and responding that these fears are really impacting my life as I can't stop thinking about this. What makes it worse is that I can't seem to find many answers. Here is what happened: I read about a dentist and some other medical offices that weren't following universal precautions and were putting people at rick for HIV and HEP C. This triggered my OCD and I decided to get test. At this point however, given that needles and syringes were my reason for getting tested, I wasn't capable to do a regular blood draw. …

Dear All, I am trying to preverve Vibrio sp. in liquid formulation (in vegetative form). This is a salt tolerant vibrio and I am preserving the vibrio in 2% NaCl containing water. The preservation is done by diluting the culture broth (could not talk about exact composition - but it contain a mix of easy and difficult to ferment sugars) in the ratio of 1:5 in 2% NaCl water. This is a aerobic bacteria, but after preservation, due to closed environment there is now room for air exchange. I could see that the formulation keeps the viability of culture for 2 weeks but loosing the viability after that. Any suggestions about process improvement or suggestions about c…

Hi all! I'm new here and coming from university with a great interest in immunology with interesting question to pose. If we were to create an antibody that bound to, and effectively blocked, the function of a (extra cellular) protein that was synthesized (naturally) by our own bodies. Would the immune system be capable generating memory B cells and replicate these antibodies on its own to prevent the need for further treatment? If this is something that may not occur, would there be a mechanism by which an injection of these antibodies and some other substrate result in the body adapting to the introduction of these antibodies and produce its own? Effectively bec…

Hello everyone, does anyone know whether E.coli is able to grow on Ethanol as carbon source (anaerobically / aerobically)?

Hi all, I am new in Microbiology lab and I was reading about the conjugation assay that is done to see if the resistance is transferred among bacteria. I was wonder..can this test work if the plasmids are not transmissible? How reliable is this test in testing if the plasmids are transferred?Do you have an idea? Any suggestion is appreciated. Thanks

Hi all, could you explain to me why the carbapenems (and other antibiotics) are considered last-resort drug? I am aware that they are used when all the other drugs fail to treat infections but I don't understand why they are the strongest..Do they have more catalytic activity?Do they act with particular molecular mechanisms?Can you explain me please? Any suggestion would be really appreciated. Thanks

If you have a product that has a micro specification of <1000cfu/g and you perform dilutions on it. So 101, 102 and 103. Growth is exhibited at 101 as semi-confluent, but no growth is exhibited on the other 2 dilutions, would you 'ignore' the growth on the first plate as it could be a false positive, maybe one colony spread across the plate.... Thank you. I'm new to this

Hello all, I'm very close to finishing a microbe identification project. However, I'm unable to find much information about any differences in lab testing results between S. Typhimurium and S. Enteritidis. I've found plenty of information on differences from S. Typhi, but not Typhimurium. From what I've seen, both are glucose fermenters, indole and VP negative, MR positive, sulfur producing, citrate positive... the only difference I've seen mentioned (but haven't confirmed) is that Enteritidis might produce a gas while fermenting glucose that Typhimurium doesn't produce. Does anyone have any insights on what test will help me distinguish between these two? Thanks!

Hi all, I have some stocks of bacteria frozen with beads. I was wondering what method is used to streak the beads on the agar plate.Do I need to shake a bit the plate to let the beads rub on the agar?Or are you aware of other more accurate techniques to do it? Thank you in advance.

Does anybody know if HIV would be able to remain infectious in a buffer solution? I recently took a test and may have spilled a little bit of the solution on me. I keep wondering if there was any infected blood in the solution would the virus be killed by the chemicals? The chemicals in the buffer solution are: The test tube solution contained approximately 1 ml of a buffered solution containing polymers and antimicrobial agents. The solution contains the following chemicals: sodium phosphate dibasic, sodium phosphate monobasic, ProClin 950, Polyvinylpryrrolidone, Triton X-100, Sodium Chloride & Sodium Hydroxide". Please let me know as I am not very familiar…

I haven't been on this site for a while but now im back. I'm not that smart in science but I do like finding out new things and doing research on different topics. I would like to get a lot better with science especially chemistry.I want an education in science beyond high school but I cant afford to go back to college. I occasionally go to the library and read all the science magazines and I do enjoy science documentaries on the science channel and discovery. But i do want some smart friends around to inspire me to learn more on my won. anyway I got a virus and the doctor told me I should take prescription drugs right away. the drugs should help my immune system kill th…

Hi all, can you tell me how I prepare a stock solution of 10% SDS? What does 10% mean in this case? 10mg in 100 ml?10 g in 100 ml ? Thank you very much. Silvia

Hi all, I have to prepare a stock solution of ciprofloxacin that is soluble in dilute aqueous acid. I did not understand what dilute aqueous acid is and how I prepare it. Can you give me some suggestions? Thank you in advance. Silvia

Found this guy lurking in the corner of a slide. Haven't found a match. Thought it might be a demodex or something in the demodicidae family. Decided to reach out for some ideas. http://imgur.com/Dh6JmRM

Hi all, I have to do PFGE on some strains of Klebsiella. It is the first time I do it and I am reading a protocol for the prepararation of agarose embedded bacterial DNA. The procedure says at a certain point to remove 5 X 108 cells (I suppose they refer to a bacterial suspension) for each ml of agarose plugs to be made. Can you explain me how you determine the volume of bacterial suspension corresponding to this amount of cells (5 X 108) and how is it calculated? I need to know it even for other protocols that say to take a specific number of cells and I did not understand how to convert this amount in volume. I thank you very much.

Hello fellow Science Forums readers, I have been somewhere in the middle of the pro-vaccine and anti-vaccine movement, and decided to crunch some numbers. Would love everyone's take on this, I still don't know where to stand for the measles (MMR) vaccination. For measles, the U.S. vaccine program started in 1963. I am using that year's population of 189.2 million for these calculations, and all data has been pulled from the CDC's website. I estimated on the high end for the pre-vaccine numbers. Pre-Vaccine Numbers (0% of the population vaccinated): - 2.1% chance of measles infection - 0.025% chance of being hospitalized for measles (1.2% of those infected) - 0.0021%…