If you have 'Myco', 'Myces', or 'Mycena' in your scientific name, I HATE you.

We have recently ended the war on gels. We've undoubtedly won. I made 6 Western-gels the other day and not a single one leaked. Mission Accomplished (hopefully I won't regret saying this).

With the end of the war on gels, a new enemy has, again, reared its ugly mycelium. Of course, like any scientist that works with tissue culture, I hate having my cultures contaminated, but it stings slightly more when it's fungal for me just because we have history. My first experience with fungal contamination was a few years ago while culturing C. elegans. I'm not going to get into GREAT detail, but this fungus was a...um... jerk. Long story short it entered the nematodes through any available orifice and ate them from the inside out. It also messed up their eggs and prevented them from hatching. Needless to say, any experiments I had going on were no longer going on.

Experience number 2 was in my first real lab work as an intern. We did tumor and stem cell work and it was fun and used actual sterile technique. Did that help? It definitely helped select for a fungus that was an absolute nightmare. You could go through the lab with a black light at one point and you could see it growing on things. By the end of it everything had been autoclaved, the hallways leading to our labs smelled like hospital, and all experiments were forced to cease because of the wide spread contamination. It took a month to deal with it, but it was dealt with.

 < Not mine

Experience number 3 and the last experience was very very recent. Right after the lab outing, actually. I came back and 1 of my cultures was definitely filled with fungus and the others were sketchy. What did I do? I bleached the bitches and ethanoled the incubator. Problem solved.

And yes, I know you're not a fungus Mycobacterium, but come on, one of your species cause TB. And yes, I also plan to post about the lab outing soon... a little at a time.