Fun with ARISA

We use a technique called ARISA in order to analyze the diversity of yeast in the antarctic soils. This technique can help us analyze how many different species are in the soil without having to culture them. Most Eukaryotes are not culturable, they can't grow on a petri dish in lab conditions, because they rely so heavily on the other organisms they live near that once separated from them they will die. There are many other reasons that most yeast won't grow but in the end it means that we wont know what that community was actually like. ARISA helps us to accurately describe the yeast communities we study.

Plate Mayhem

So we recently discovered that we were out of petri dishes and had to order some more. Somewhere along the line our order got messed up and instead of giving us the two boxes of dishes we ordered, we were sent 14 boxes. Each box contains about 500 dishes so until we can send them back, we have 6000 extra petri dishes sitting around the lab. We have been thinking about why a person could possibly want 6000 petri dishes. So far we have come up with, frisbees, giant monocles, mini aquariums, or lashing them all together to make a glass bottomed boat. Anybody else have any ideas?

By Ben Segee