Of course I should have known my audience and known a group of microbiologists wouldn't let it slide without photographic evidence.
Promising culprit:
I'm never forgiving @ATinyGreenCell for this
My mom (who made the soup for my birthday) came across this thread and now 1) I have to answer for letting her soup spoil and 2) she's worried @ATinyGreenCell will figure out her secret recipe
THREE TIMES.
Metagenomic DNA acquired!
Blue beef soup swab, stab in beef bullion agar, and metagenomic DNA on its way to @ATinyGreenCell !!
Trying to grow some myself in the mean time using beef bullion agar that smells like Top Ramen 😅 #BlueSoup
Just thinking how absolutely ridiculous the Materials & Methods and Acknowledgements sections are going to be if #BlueSoup becomes a paper 🤣
No turning back now!
Lollll think #BlueSoup is a contender? 😆
Growth after 24h. There's some trace growth on the plate incubated at 4°C but hard to see from photo
CALM DOWN EVERYONE @ATinyGreenCell and I have a plan
Since this is of great debate, no there is not cabbage, beets, garlic (surprising given my family uses it in everything), tomatoes, or soy milk in this recipe.
There's definitely at least 1 carrot though.
Alright we've figured out how the recipe will appear in the #BlueSoup paper 🤣
I forgot we had more witnesses to the genesis!
Left the plates where they were for another 2 days, except the 37°C one was brought to RT, which then grew white stuff over the yellow stuff and stinks to high heaven. RT looked the same. 4°C had impressive growth. Restreaked them all onto TECH agar, awaiting results!
Since I'm catching flak for this, to be clear, these were literally just the blue swabs directly onto the plates to try to grow as much as I can while @ATinyGreenCell receives and revives the swabs I sent him, not an attempt to properly streak out samples.
No blue yet on TECH plates at any temps tested. @ATinyGreenCell is still gonna streak out for single colonies to see if he can find any blue ones hidden.
Dual-coast effort begins!
Observational evidence building...
Getting our Materials and Methods in order
Blue spectrum preliminary update! Absorbance peak @ 590nm with swab resusp in H2O and spun down. Gotta check w/ diff cuvette but very cool!
And the plated swab on differential media! Glows on King's Agar B but not A!
Iridescent colonies!
The isolates be cominggggg
This isolation progress continues
FEAR NOT, EVERYONE! The chemists are on it! #BlueSoup
Blue soup to blue cheese....
#BlueSoup shotgun library! Gonna QC the size distribution tomorrow after I get some rest and fresh soup 🤧 Hopefully first thing next week it can be sent off to @seqcoast!
Nothing yet on #ScienceCheese but it certainly smells unique!
#BlueSoup enzymatic testing Pt 1!
OK EVERYONE KEEP CALM #bluesoup
I HAVE IMPORTANT INFORMATION! 4°C versus RT!! Also no blue on LB + beef bouillon.
(Before anyone snarks that's an intentional heavy restreak of the original swab blob to keep as much as I could before Seb tested his swab - blue part is heavy part of streak! Density-dep??)
The isolation quest continues:
Musing time:
Closer look at blue/indigo diffuse... Seems density dependent.
Back in the lab finally, and #BlueSoup sequencing library is good to go!
*Preliminary* #BlueSoup 16S-seq results:
Shotgun #BlueSoup data are back from @seqcoast! Prelim analyses support the 16S data: it's predominantly a mix of Pseudomonads, & we're diving in. However, despite using the domestic q-tip and crude trash can containment methods, there's only 0.08% homo sapiens DNA in there 🤣
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