All this talk of algae reminds me of a project I embarked upon when I was about 14 years old. I had the rather ambitious idea that I could use algae to feed an animal tissue culture. Essentially what I tried to do was grow algae in a glass tube and using a bacterial or protozoan intermediary, feed the muscle tissue culture.
In other words, I attempted have sunlight feed the algae on one end, and for filet mignon to be extruded out the other. I obtained a really nice Pyrex glass tube about 4 inches in diameter and 6 feet long with ground flanges on each end. I have no idea what these cost originally, but an industrial surplus place had hundreds of these beauties for a quarter each. People used to buy them and use them for target practice. I got some unidentified algae species from the duck pond in a local park and I must say the algae thrived remarkably well in the glass tube. Well at least that part worked. Nearly pure oxygen collects at the top of the tube. Must be good for something. As you can imagine, the rest of my effort didn't work out so well. I had in fact succeeded with a tissue growth medium, but nothing resembling meat was the result. Undaunted, I tried various combinations of organisms inside the algae tube with the tissue culture. In the end, practically everything I tried in the tube succeeded in making a really smelly toxic brown mess of the algae. My dreams of cheap steak were dashed. Not long after that, I learned that the glass tubing was surplussed out from the old Vitro uranium processing plant. Those tubes were likely radioactive as hell. Remember that no one was very concerned about such things in those days. See: http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/umtra/salt_lake_title1.html http://tinyurl.com/3ffgjs It sort of makes me wonder if algae might grow a little better in a radioactive environment. You know, some like it hot. M. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
