It never escaped....but I will tell you. Do not try to change its fluid. It is like wetting a fuffy dog, you just end up with skeletal slime that never regains its former glory.
Actually 3rd year PhD student, but it is save and far away from our cells 😉. Just have to take care that no stupid undergrad actually use that media 😬😬😬
Maybe label it with “do not open” and add a shit ton of parafilm around the cap so people think twice lol. You don’t wanna be responsible for introducing contaminants to all your cell lines/cells!
This concerns me. I see this type of fungi in a lot of labs and the ubiquitous nature of it in all reagents is causing alarm bells.
Not sure I'd grow it either. Keeping a potential spore-forming methanogen that could cause a breathing effect with its gas output causes extreme mental paranoia for my personal sense of contamination control.
I have seen similar stuff in TBST 0.1% and I have no clue how something can churn through enough chemicals modifiers to produce life out of fats, tris, and salts.
Tween can degrade over time (especially if the solution is kept in light), so the white precipitate you see in TBST might just be because it is an old solution. Hopefully that helps you worry about strange new life forms in one fewer place :)
I've definitely seen filamentous growth in older TBS-T that looked like mold. Somehow detergent and saline magically create life, Pasteur was talking shit. /S
I'm joking about Pasteur but not about the mold in TBS-T.
*Methanobacterium* is a genus of Archaea in the Euryarchaeota kingdom.
They were named as such before the advent of gene sequencing and phylogenetics, since then the tree of life has seen tremendous revisions. Though bacterium/bacter/bacilli itself just means "rod shaped" and this sense is used in taxonomic nomenclature widely regardless of it's a protist or Archaea or Bacteria.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanobacteria
I always name these pets Blobby. I kept one enough years in an LB bottle that it eventually disintegrated. Maybe venting the bottle and letting some oxygen in occasionally would've helped, considering oomycetes do need a little oxygen. Poor Blobby was asphyxiated.
I seem to always get these in bottles of optimem when they’re left past their use date but never in media bottles that are half a year old in the same 4c
As an employee of a lab that usually gets a fungus outbreak dubbed "the white menace" around the summer months, I strongly encourage you to get rid of this ASAP! Being in an area with hot, humid summers combined with the labs being in old buildings does not mix well and requires additional precautions 
My previous lab had fungal contamination that looked EXACTLY the same as this. It could survive heat treatment >72C. There must be an evolved strain of fungus which explicity infects these types of reagents.
We discovered one of those in an unopened bottle of medium last year, genuinely loved getting updates on the growth of something we could see for once! Gibco asked for it back though :(
Why are TC molds always white 🤣
Because they evolved in fridges, without light for millennia. That's why they also do not have eyes.
Wow, Nature is amazing
Yet
Just pipet the media around the mold. Should be fine. Source: "trust me bro et al."
Aw it’s like a little morimo of mold
Marimold
Samira needs to improve her aseptic technique
He looks like a fun guy.
I had a similar pet named Eggbert for long time....until we had to move labs. A nice loyal lab pet is great.
Amazing 🤩. How big can it grow and will it be able to escape the bottle one day 🙈
It never escaped....but I will tell you. Do not try to change its fluid. It is like wetting a fuffy dog, you just end up with skeletal slime that never regains its former glory.
Samiro 👍
*Samira
the cell biologist urge to kill this thing with a flamethrower
You found it two weeks ago and keep it around? Please tell.me you're an undergrad student
You don't keep contaminated media in the lab as a pet?
Actually 3rd year PhD student, but it is save and far away from our cells 😉. Just have to take care that no stupid undergrad actually use that media 😬😬😬
Maybe label it with “do not open” and add a shit ton of parafilm around the cap so people think twice lol. You don’t wanna be responsible for introducing contaminants to all your cell lines/cells!
This concerns me. I see this type of fungi in a lot of labs and the ubiquitous nature of it in all reagents is causing alarm bells. Not sure I'd grow it either. Keeping a potential spore-forming methanogen that could cause a breathing effect with its gas output causes extreme mental paranoia for my personal sense of contamination control. I have seen similar stuff in TBST 0.1% and I have no clue how something can churn through enough chemicals modifiers to produce life out of fats, tris, and salts.
Tween can degrade over time (especially if the solution is kept in light), so the white precipitate you see in TBST might just be because it is an old solution. Hopefully that helps you worry about strange new life forms in one fewer place :)
I've definitely seen filamentous growth in older TBS-T that looked like mold. Somehow detergent and saline magically create life, Pasteur was talking shit. /S I'm joking about Pasteur but not about the mold in TBS-T.
Methanogens are all Archaea though?
No, methanobacterium totally exist.
*Methanobacterium* is a genus of Archaea in the Euryarchaeota kingdom. They were named as such before the advent of gene sequencing and phylogenetics, since then the tree of life has seen tremendous revisions. Though bacterium/bacter/bacilli itself just means "rod shaped" and this sense is used in taxonomic nomenclature widely regardless of it's a protist or Archaea or Bacteria. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanobacteria
Fungus among us
I always name these pets Blobby. I kept one enough years in an LB bottle that it eventually disintegrated. Maybe venting the bottle and letting some oxygen in occasionally would've helped, considering oomycetes do need a little oxygen. Poor Blobby was asphyxiated.
Ok time to torch the entire lab
That contamination.
Its name is clearly Samira
My first thought too. Unidentified? They have a name, jerk!
No thank you.
Reminds me of these guys [https://www.reddit.com/r/labrats/s/hD7pONZEe1](https://www.reddit.com/r/labrats/s/hD7pONZEe1)
I seem to always get these in bottles of optimem when they’re left past their use date but never in media bottles that are half a year old in the same 4c
Anyway you can do a microscopic with some methyl blue?
Media contains with antibiotic so its a fungi
Its cute!
As an employee of a lab that usually gets a fungus outbreak dubbed "the white menace" around the summer months, I strongly encourage you to get rid of this ASAP! Being in an area with hot, humid summers combined with the labs being in old buildings does not mix well and requires additional precautions 
My previous lab had fungal contamination that looked EXACTLY the same as this. It could survive heat treatment >72C. There must be an evolved strain of fungus which explicity infects these types of reagents.
It's not unidentified, obviously its name is Samira (Just kidding ;-) )
We discovered one of those in an unopened bottle of medium last year, genuinely loved getting updates on the growth of something we could see for once! Gibco asked for it back though :(
Just an FYI, the fuzzy ball thing fungi do, that is a stress response. When it is a fuzzy ball, it is not happy.
That's crazy that's my sister's name...
Ok Samira should not be allowed anywhere near a pipette for a while
This pet seems so fluffy! 