Bluenoise

You're really lucky you didn't eat a green portion. Many people make this mistake. It's not raw potatoes that are toxic it's green parts of potatoes. When a part of the potatoe is above ground it turns green in response to the sunlight. Eating this green portion raw can be deadly. And I'm serious it can kill you. There are chemicals in them that can stop your heat from beating. Don't take this as another rumor and try it out. The potatoe produces this chemical to stop pests from eating it. That includes humans. Plants can run away when threatened so this is how they defend themselves. Plants are the masters of chemical warfare.

Well for any scientific information the best place to go are journal articles. Though depending on what you know they maybe hard to read. Review articles shouldn't be too dificult for anyone though.

There are four possible ways of measuring the difference. 1) using circular dicorism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_dichroism 2) reacting it with an enzyme that works on vitamin C. An enzyme will only be specific for one of the enantiomers. 3) crystalizing them and looking for two different cystal shapes under a microscope. I know it's the way loise pasteur did it originally. 4) Reacting them with another single enantiomer to make a diastereomer and sperating that based on different chemical properties. I'd suggest the circular dicorism...

I find it to be a good source of information, but I would need to varify it from somewhere more reputable before using it for anything.

I remember a study in nature a couple years back that showed that oriental people who abstain from eating msg don't suffer from a greater risk of near sightedness than other ethnic groups. Seems there might a simple cause to the increased rate of nearsightedness in Asians... I'm dead serious about this.

Coordination number is more important for inorganic chemistry. For organic its pretty much 4 (Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Sulfur, Phosphorus). Double bonds reducing it by 1. Plus occasionally it will be higher when you have a metal bound or something like weird like that. I guess a carbocation whould have a coordination Number of 3 but that is very short lived species. Yeah organic chemists don't really worry much about coordination number. It's pretty much limited to a few values. Oh yeah this should be moved to the chemistry forum. Doesn't have much to do with biochemistry.

He he it's a trick question you see. If they were as you say they wouldn't be edible then!! But seriously now, I can't say for sure. However, I'm pretty sure these interactions don't exist. Why? Well think about it the chemicals we eat are basically the same chemicals that make up our body. So it's unlikely this will occur. Plus most of them are broken down into their basic constituitive units in our gut. On a side note there are some proteins that when digested by other other proteins (both proteins can be considered "food") release toxic species. Like a few present in apricot pits. But this really is the exception to the rule. I don't know of any foods that are dangerous when cooked. But there are some that are dangerous when not cooked. I guess if you burn the hell out of food you can get poisoning from some of the PAH's and other toxics formed in the process. It's akin to eating cigarette smoke. Just remember you are what you eat.

I'm pretty sure it's based entirley on an observed increased frequence of schizophrenia in cannabis users. The big debate is on where it causes this effect or whether schizophernics find cannabis more attractive than most people since they find medicinal relief from it. I have a strong feeling both senerios are true. Meaning it may have the ability to bring out schizophernia in certain individuals predisposed to it, as well as providing some relief to those who already have the condition. Don't sound very simple eh? This effect is more likely psycological than purely chemical so there are likely to be a wide range of reactions.

Yes it a sodium glutamate salt. If you add equal parts NaOH to glutamic acid you will be left with MSG and water. It just stimulates taste receptors. however it is linked to quite a few negative health effects if taken often.

Yeah it just adds more stupid cells to your brain.

Where would this cholorine come from in the first place?

I'm guessing from this reply that you haven't recieved this advice from a real doctor. As "toxins in the blood" isn't the cause of psoriasis. Just a cheep excuse some natural path or friend of your'se would give you. I'd sugest going to a real doctor that will treat it properly and perscribe something that has a chance of helping you. There are medicated ointments for this condition as well as other treatments like uv light (tanning), plus lifestyle changes that can be made to lessen the severity of the condition such cutting down on alcoholic beverages and other narcotics. All the best.

Interesting idea. But I don't see how your getting a connection between an increase in CO2 and water droplet formation. More than likely the increased droplets you're getting is a combined effect from the heat and particulate matter given off from the candle. Since the container with the candle in it would be substantially warmer the air in it would absorb more moisture from the water below. Plus you need to take into consideration that a burning candle does not only produce CO2 as a waste product but it also produces water as a waist production. The carbon in the candle reacts with oxygen to make CO2 and the hydrogen in the candle reacts with oxygen to make H2O. Once this more moist air hit the suran wrap more water would condense on it. Also an increase in particulate matter would create a small "matrix" like effect that would assist in defusing your water droplets and linking them. It's an interesting idea you have but you to setup controls so you know that the results that you're seeing are a result of your hypothesis and not other factors. What I mean is if you want to use a candle as a source of CO2 you need a controll that is setup in such a way that you have a point source that creates smoke and heat without CO2. Or you need to find a way to only modify the level of CO2 in your container, without the smoke and heat and whatever else the candles presence could be causing.

You also have to realise that some vitamins our ancestors never had the ability to produce in the first place. Take vitamin A for example. We produce Retinol from the break down of caratenoids. There are no animals at all capable of producing caratenoids, all animals need to aquire these in their diet. Production of caratenoids is complicated and involves many enzymes. Now the main reason for this is because vision (like with eyes) in animals evolved after photosynthesis did. So because retinol is produced from caratenoids which are photosynthetic pigments animals never had the need to evolve the ability to produce them themselves since by the time vision evolved these pigments were already in our diets. Thought I'd just throw that in.

Hey sorry I didn't respond earlier. BTW the big point your missing is that beta-lactamase codes for ampicillin resistance. Beta-lactamase codes for an enzyme which breaks down the latam ring found in many penicillin type anti-biotics. I think not pointing this out is what is causing the difficulty in getting you a good answer. I had known this previously but it took a little while to come back to me. Doh! So if you digest the genomic dna from your host than shot gun it into a few clones for expression all you need to do is grow the clones on amp containing medium and only those with your gene will survive. Much simpler eh? You may have to try a few different digest methods till you find one that doesn't disrupt your gene of interest. Sonication and blunt end ligation would probably be a good way to go about it. Yeah so you don't really need to do any special selection or screening, functional complementation by the beta-lactamase gene will be enough. So to make that clear blue/white or antibiotic resistance on your plasmid is a complete waste of time. You just need a plasmid capable of expressing the gene. Plus you don't need to know anything about the gene before hand except for it's function (which you do). I hope that helps. I'd write you up a proceedure, but I'm pretty swamped for time as is sorry.

That would be too much work. I don't have a problem answering questions, but doing someones homework for them when I should be doing my own isn't wise.

Oh just as a side note do you know that most vitamins that you consume in a pack of multi-vitamins are made from petroleum bi-products? There are only a few exceptions (B12 and I forget the rest). Oh and the rest of these are produced by genetically altered microbes in the biotech industry. It's really fun to tell many health nuts this.

What's your point? So there are some extreeme examples where poeple have vitamin C deficiency, no one here is denying it exists. But the fact remains that a typical human diet contains more than adequate vitamin C, which is why we no long need to have the ability to produce it. Seeing as how poeple in poorer nations are more likley to starve to death it's beneficial for their bodies to not waste energy in producing a vitamin they're getting enough of for the most part. Are you trying to dispute this? Would you suggest giving starving people vitamins instead of food? Which as I last recall contains vitamins. Well maybe you shouldn't be assuming that. That's not an arguement. From what I've read and I have read research on this. There are far more respectible studies debunking the use of vitamins than there are supporting it. Any search on the internet will find this information. Actually the only solid research on vitamins shows that excess of many vitamins especially the fat soluble ones can be very detrimental to your health. If you do a quick search on the net you'll find that info on vitamins just a big pot of conflicting information. Except for the dangers of over consumptions which are very clear. Like why not just eat a balanced diet and get all you need from that, Instead of eating crap trying to compensate for it with vitamins which may or may not help and accept the risks that come from that?

They have alot more to worry about from their bad diets than lack of vitamins. They'll be more likley die from a heart attack before they see any signs of inadequate vitamins.

Well if you don't know anything about the gene than you're going to have to find it first. So maybe look for a mutant that's defective in the genes function then I guess try to isolate that gene, or protein by comparison to a wild type. If you find the protein, you can use degenerate primers to fish it out. But this is a whole other question in itself. I'm sorry you're going to have to rephrase that second part again. I'm not sure what you're trying to say. A plasmid with amp resistane works to makes sure that only colonies with the plasmid grow if you plate them onto medium containing ampicillin. A plasmid that allows for blue/white screening allows you to screen the colonies that have grow for just those who's plasmid has an insert in it. Now if you set up your ligation in such a manner as there can really only be 1 possible insert well then you'll have a good idea what it will be.

Look vitamins exist for a reason. They're chemicals that we've lost the ability to produce due to their abundant supply in our diet. We don't need to produce them because we get enough as is. And no one gets scurvy anymore. Vitamin C does not boost your imune system. To tell you the truth there is really no good evidence at all to support that getting extract vitamins is beneficial. There is however a whole lot of unsupported speculation. The closest I've ever seen as support for taking vitamins is a study that showed that maybe if you're a serious alpine skier or marathon runner that vitamin C might just might give you a slight reduction in a cold. The few individuals in todays society that have deficiencies usually result from their inability to properly use that vitamins that they get, not from not getting enough vitamins. Sure maybe if you're stupid enought to try to survive off of kraft dinner alone eating a multi-vitamin might help you. But for a person that eats a varied diet all vitamins do is give you expensive pee. Really they give nutritionists more to talk about, but for someone who doesn't eat a stupid diet or has some underlying problem extra vitamins serve no purpose.

Well at first I thought you wanted to use sds to for dna electrophoresis. Since even thought sds is used for proteins. Dna electrophoresis of the purified and digested plasmid would be a way to make sure your insert is there. So that's why I said that. I see what you ment. You want to express the protien then look for it? That's alot of work, and a waste of time/money. And even then you wouldn't be sure you're looking at the right protein necessarily with all the other stuff present. Also for cloning purposes you don't want to be expressing the gene. Metabolic load and all. Just use blue/white screening and then mimiprep, digest then run that on a gel to show it's the right fragment. If you're really paranoid send the fragment for sequencing. But proteins expression is a pretty painstaking way to do it. You're not integrating it into the genome you just using E. Coli as a host for cloning. Plus you don't need to integrate it into the genome to express it anyways a plasmid will do. Also your not going to get much purification with centrifugation, you'll just get some rough cuts.

Well from that answer it's obvious you don't know what SDS-PAGE is. Anyways in response to the original post it all depends on what you know about the beta lactamase gene. If you know the sequence or at least the boardering sequences you can purifiy the genomic dna of the organism you're trying to isolate from and then use pcr to amplify out the gene. If all you know is protein sequence then you may need to generate degenerate primers to get the gene out. If you don't even know that. Well then you have quite a bit of work to find the gene or protein responsible. And I'm not going into that. But lets say you do have the primers well then you can use PCR to get your gene amplified out of the organism genomic dna. Ligate this into a vector for cloning. If you're smart you would have used pcr primers to add restriction enzyme cutting sites to your gene of interest that match those in your vector. Then transform your E. coli cells with it using electroporation or maybe CaCl2 competant cells. A good standard vector, one like pBS/SK with an antibiotic resistance selectable marker will help ensure you only get colonies with that are transformed with the plasmid, as well as a second screenable marker for colonies that actualy take up a plasmid that has the gene inserted like blue/white screening.

It depends on how they're stored. Repeated thawing and freeing can degrade them quickly. If you can post a pic of your gel with the marker used and uncut plasmid size, it would be alot easier to give you a definite answer.

No but I'm sure if you put the names into google either the second or first link would be to that information.