{"id":11,"date":"2007-01-11T00:12:18","date_gmt":"2007-01-11T06:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/?p=11"},"modified":"2007-01-11T00:13:03","modified_gmt":"2007-01-11T06:13:03","slug":"bendy-benjamin-or-flatulent-fred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/?p=11","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Bendy Benjamin&#8221; or &#8220;Flatulent Fred&#8221;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was doing a bit of poking around today, and now I&#8217;m wondering if the funky-looking spiral\/bendy bacteria are of the genus <a title=\"More details here, plus pictures\" href=\"http:\/\/microbewiki.kenyon.edu\/index.php\/Desulfovibrio\">Desulfovibrio<\/a>.  The cell <span title=\"That's what us science-types say when the word 'shape' doesn't seem cool enough\" class=\"moreinfo\">morphology<\/span> kind of fits &#8211; and there&#8217;s <span title=\"hydrogen sulfide smells - ahem - diSTINKtive.\" class=\"moreinfo\">good evidence<\/span> that there&#8217;s sulfate being reduced down to hydrogen sulfide in the samples (it&#8217;s possible there are no iron reducers at all, really, and that the iron reduction is just being caused by reaction with the hydrogen sulfide.)  I should mention, though, that this is pretty audacious speculation, since it&#8217;s essentially impossible to identify anything based on just looking at it in a microscope&#8230;<br \/>\nIf nothing else, though, if it IS a &#8220;desulfovibrio&#8221; type bacteria it might be the most <span title=\"can grow even when there's a lot of salt around\" class=\"moreinfo\">halotolerant<\/span> one described so far.  I wouldn&#8217;t be surprised if I&#8217;ve actually got a few different sulfate-reducing bacteria growing in there.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s something I like about scientific research &#8211; even if you don&#8217;t get what you&#8217;re looking for, you can still find interesting new things (I&#8217;ll be a little disappointed if I can find no <span title=\"grows BEST when there is a lot of salt around\" class=\"moreinfo\">halophilic<\/span> iron-reducing bacteria in the samples, but it would <em>still<\/em> be spiffy to just manage to isolate and identify some previously unknown bug.  Or in my currently more-easily-pleased case, just to isolate an odd organism to add to the culture collection I&#8217;d like to start&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Hopefully more time at the microscope tomorrow, so maybe I&#8217;ll have more (and better) pictures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was doing a bit of poking around today, and now I&#8217;m wondering if the funky-looking spiral\/bendy bacteria are of the genus Desulfovibrio. The cell morphology kind of fits &#8211; and there&#8217;s good evidence that there&#8217;s sulfate being reduced down to hydrogen sulfide in the samples (it&#8217;s possible there are no iron reducers at all, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/?p=11\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;Bendy Benjamin&#8221; or &#8220;Flatulent Fred&#8221;?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-microbiology","category-nerdity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}