Tell me something new (maybe it doesn't have to be) that you learned this week that was exciting to you
I had to wait until I could get on a computer to talk about this because I wanted to show PICTURES. I did just spend a solid half hour looking for the /perfect/ picture of what I’m about to talk about but also my research involves a species that has a Wikipedia of about 20 sentences (and no pictures) so I’m not sure what I expected.
Let me tell you about diatoms.
While they aren’t what I’m researching (in fact they are proving to be a hindrance to my research lol). They’re still pretty cool though. They’re a kind of microalgae and a really common type phytoplankton.
(This is as close as I could get to what I see on a daily basis around my algae I’m trying to isolate. This is zoomed in further than what I typically look at though. Maybe I’ll snag a picture later.)
The cool thing I’m talking about is their whole silica thing. A common phrase is “they build themselves glass houses” which is super generalized and not really accurate. It gets the point across though. But basically they take silica (SiO2- common in quartz) from their environment and incorporate it into their cell walls. How they do this isn’t particularly well understood though.
So I’m trying to get rid of them from my cultures so I can isolate what I need to and talking with my research advisor - he recommended trying to get some germanium dioxide and put it into our media because it’s similar enough to silica to inhibit diatom growth. So we’re going to try and do that.
So my cool thing is essentially I might be able to actually make progress on my research by giving the diatoms a bad place to live and fingers crossed it doesn’t mess with my cyanobacteria! :D
Ask me science and microbial and school things!
