I have a series of combination plasmids based on the pET-28a vector, each of which contains the ppk gene from different bacteria inserted at the same site. The sequence length of these plasmids is approximately 7300 base pairs each. I am curious about whether the copy numbers of these plasmids remain consistent after they are separately introduced into E. coli cells ..read more

I'm probably worrying about nothing but since the pandemic I've been even more worried about germs. I was given a used laptop - the keyboard I sprayed lightly with an alcohol aerosal and then wiped down with antibacterial wipes. I didn't take the keys off, so I'm not confident that the underneath of the keys got cleaned. How long do harmful germs last on a keyboard anyway? I've had it for about 2 months and since I don't really understand microbiology and have only seen the scaremongering in adverts about germs, I'm freaking out. I didn't wait for the alcohol spray to dry either before I wiped ..read more

I am writing my thesis/dissertation. It dealt with the antimicrobial activity of novel compounds. Next to determining the MIC, I also subcultured the organisms to conclude about the mode of action. I determined the MBCs for every compound and also calculated the MBC/MIC ratio. This ratio tells me more about the potential mode of action (static or cidal). For instance, smaller than 4 would be bactericidal. I don't know how to deal with these results. Can I already assign the mode of action after naming the results, or should this be part of the discussion? I had the same question about my syn ..read more

I've been a heavy smoker since I was 19. Just background fact. After maybe 17 malaria-free years in Nigeria, I eventually came down with it in 2016 (P. falciparum) and running 400 C I was immediately hospitalised for 3 days on a combination quinine/paracetamol drip. This repeated 2 years later. On both occasions, I had three days of no urge to smoke whatsoever, which was a really big deal to me. Normally two hours abstention pushes me into a tense, hyperactive somewhat sociopathic state that can alarm those around me. Basically. I smoke to stay in employment (and married!). So any way out ..read more

I think this is a fairly simple question, but I'm interested in such research. If you heat yogurt in the microwave, will the bacteria in it die or not? I understand that this is a very simple question, so don't laugh, but I didn't find the answer. Some people think that the bacteria will die and the milk will lose its beneficial properties, others think that everything will be fine, what do you think? I also wanted to add at the same time why the immune system does not kill beneficial bacteria in our intestines? If the second question is difficult then just give a link to a book on the subject ..read more

Can someone help identify these spots?   ..read more

Gradually, the bacteria adapt to antibiotics. In the nature of bacteria, viruses sometimes win. In the future, when antibiotics stop working on bacteria, we should be ready to use viruses. Do you think this is possible ..read more

This is a photograph of a human blood stain on an organic (inert) substrate.  As I am no expert in this field, what am I looking at? and what is the "winding" in the middle of the photo.. does blood present like this under magnification?   ..read more

I have recently had genetic testing to rule out BRCA gene, but came up with a PTEN mutation (p.Y336... c.1008C>G)- tumor suppressant gene . I have a medical history of a tiny breast cancer about 12 years ago (a few millimeters), colon polyps, and macrocephaly. Other than that I am perfectly healthy.  My physicians have told  me I have Cowden syndrome, and it is now a 4 alarm fire with need for multiple tests per year, but all the studies I read on this indicate incidence is about 1/200,000. Not sure about the actual pathogenicity of this, as they are just reporting case studies an ..read more

Hi everybody, I am currently working on a 1st year assignment to make a bar chart of bacterial germ count in (CFU/mL) of various objects that have been disinfected. Since the data between the different objects varies considerably (12 CFU/mL to 3.2 x 10^9 CFU/ml) I thought about log transforming the data. However, I ran into the following: the counts are performed in triplicate, I would like to calculate a standard deviation of this, do I need to calculate the SD (or even the relative standard deviation) of the log transformed data or of the non-log transformed data. Thanks in advance for your ..read more