Oolite Bulletins

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

they may insert their cargo into your DNA though. These agrobacteriums are used as vectors to insert genes into plants, but may do so in mammals too on occasion.

I did Brewing & Distilling at Uni, which covered MicroBiology and Biochem.

Could we use these agrobacteria to create superheroes? (And supervillains, obviously.)
Bags be the first guineapig that goes horribly wrong. Mwwwah ha ha!

I could conceivably make some cells of your skin glow under harch UV radiation.
(remember GFP-rabbit?)
Unfortunately, eyes and skin are sensitive to this light and would deteriorate in short order.

For whole organism transformation, as required in super mutants, germcells need to be transformed. Before embryo development.

Also even in plants (the host organism of this bacterium) trnsformation frequency is very low...like one in 500 cells.

This reminds me of the time when I was part of a project studying insect control.
We had to breed "pure cultures" of flies, starting with one virgin fly (and one male ). We had about 8 million flies in cages and then a cleaner forgot not to spray insecticide in that lab.......

So how did you know it was a virgin?

TGHC wrote:

So how did you know it was a virgin?

A *very* small chastity belt....

Captain Hesperus

actually it is assumed that fruitfly grubs have no sex (in the verb sense)....
then again in our ooniverse insects have n o such morals, gubs are widely exploited in seedy (lol) establishments catering to the debased tastes of jaded spacefarers.

...Don't you mean the cleaner forgot to NOT spray insecticide inside the lab?


I hate grey flies, they f** up my plants. damn buggering bugs;)

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

actually it is assumed that fruitfly grubs have no sex....

Poor bastards. They obviously don't go to the right bars then....

Captain Hesperus

I was very impressed that fruit flies were used in the very early days of genetic research, many many yars ago, and that even now in the modern days of DNA fruit flies are still one of the preferred choices for research, so how did they know way back then?

What do you mean by "the early days"?

Fruit Flies were known to have a single large chromosome before Watson & Crick Did their work on DNA so people hoped to see changes microscopically.

It then transpired that they were good subjects to study because of rapid breeding cycles, they don't sting, they are not messy .....

Early 20th century I think, it was in the very early research into geneology IIRC it was in Watson's book DNA. I think it may even have been Mendel, who was even earlier.

Actually, most biology students are probably remembering the terrible experiment of extraction of the giant chromosoms of the chironoms. We had to tear small worms, larvae of flies, between the 2nd and 3rd segment if I remember well and find under the microscope the salivae glands ! It was a massacre. This is one of the reason I specialized later in geology !