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 Big Red
No Stranger Than Anyone Else
Registered: 08/08/08
Posts: 69
Loc: Tx Gulf Coast
Last seen: 3 years, 4 months
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 Question to Trusted Cultivator's About Mycelium Life Span 
#9622663 - 01/16/09 05:28 PM (3 years, 4 months ago) |
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Put aside the argument that continued use of old mycelium to inoculate new substrate increases the chance for contams.
Since it's easy for experienced newbie's to keep mycelium (from non-isolate inoculations) growing in new substrate I tried to search out the downsides to this approach (again, putting aside the contam issue). The answer I found was that psilocin 'content' / strength in the older mycelium is weakened over time (it's just the way the genetics work). Obviously this weakening supports the need for inoculate from new spore sources.
In a round-about way this question (kind-of) came up before but I couldn't find a response from one of our Trusted Cultivator Gods. Is this the way it works?
Thanks for your time.
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 Premedman1
Assistant to the insistent
Registered: 12/21/05
Posts: 2,339
Loc: South of Sanity
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Re: Question to Trusted Cultivator's About Mycelium Life Span [Re: Big Red]
#9622779 - 01/16/09 05:55 PM (3 years, 4 months ago) |
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You're referring to senescence, or the degradation of fungal cells through the repeated process of cell division.
As a mycelial network's cells divide, dna is replicated. With each replication, mistakes are made by the cell, causing this degradation. In layman's terms, the mycelium is aging, not unlike we do.
This, in turn, causes undesired characteristics such as sluggish growth, a lesser ability to ward off contamination, and possibly a loss in psilocybin/psilocin production.
It's not that the resulting mycelium is not viable, it just won't be optimal. Would you want a healthy 25 year old on your basketball team, or a worn out 60 year old that's been overplayed his entire life?
With that said, RR recommends no more than 3 grain to grain transfers before spawning to bulk to limit senescence.
The best way to avoid this would be to make a "master culture", and keep it refrigerated. This refrigeration process slows cell division and keeps the culture fresh. Whenever you need fresh genes, just pull from your master culture. When you're getting low on MC, just use a small amount to start a new MC. You will notice very little senescence, if any, with this method for at least a few transfers.
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Build a man a fire, he is warm for the night. Set a man on fire, he is warm for the rest of his life.
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Omnicracker
Crusted Trolltivator
Registered: 09/18/05
Posts: 1,419
Loc: Wal-Merica
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Re: Question to Trusted Cultivator's About Mycelium Life Span [Re: Premedman1]
#9622830 - 01/16/09 06:06 PM (3 years, 4 months ago) |
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what he said. also, the less food there is available to you stored master culture the longer it will store without senescence. in the fridge of course.
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FooMan
Libertarian
Registered: 02/02/05
Posts: 7,544
Loc: Earth 
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Re: Question to Trusted Cultivator's About Mycelium Life Span [Re: Big Red]
#9622933 - 01/16/09 06:24 PM (3 years, 4 months ago) |
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Premedman1 covered that excellently 
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mushroomhunter10
Jack-Of-All-Trades
Registered: 10/04/08
Posts: 3,357
Loc: Midwest
Last seen: 9 months, 12 days
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Re: Question to Trusted Cultivator's About Mycelium Life Span [Re: FooMan]
#9623006 - 01/16/09 06:34 PM (3 years, 4 months ago) |
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Wouldn't changing the master culture's medium when creating a new one from it also help?
For instance. You have a master culture in PDA. When it runs low, then take the last bit of master and put it into MEA. Wouldn't that help prevent or even slow senescense by changing what it's thriving in?
Thanks
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Nibin
Getting there
Registered: 11/29/05
Posts: 4,480
Last seen: 4 months, 22 days
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Re: Question to Trusted Cultivator's About Mycelium Life Span [Re: Premedman1]
#9624940 - 01/17/09 02:53 AM (3 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
Premedman1 said:
You're referring to senescence, or the degradation of fungal cells through the repeated process of cell division.
As a mycelial network's cells divide, dna is replicated. With each replication, mistakes are made by the cell, causing this degradation. In layman's terms, the mycelium is aging, not unlike we do.
This, in turn, causes undesired characteristics such as sluggish growth, a lesser ability to ward off contamination, and possibly a loss in psilocybin/psilocin production.
It's not that the resulting mycelium is not viable, it just won't be optimal. Would you want a healthy 25 year old on your basketball team, or a worn out 60 year old that's been overplayed his entire life?
With that said, RR recommends no more than 3 grain to grain transfers before spawning to bulk to limit senescence.
The best way to avoid this would be to make a "master culture", and keep it refrigerated. This refrigeration process slows cell division and keeps the culture fresh. Whenever you need fresh genes, just pull from your master culture. When you're getting low on MC, just use a small amount to start a new MC. You will notice very little senescence, if any, with this method for at least a few transfers.
Telomeres, don't forget telomeres.
When DNA is copied the copy strand always is missing the last few bits of information due to a unerversal error in the system. Imagine a photocopier machine that can not copy the last line in your text. So each time you make a copy you lose a line of text.
What cells do to avoid losing important DNA this way is they add a load of junk dna at the end of the strand so that all that is lost is unimportant information. In the fotocopier example it would be as if you added roighjeargiohgioaejthiojsetahipiertjhhtjlsrtdkjhpejhepaiojha<sehpi for a few lines at the end of the text. That way when you fotocopies you would not lose the important information on the document, just some random letters.
This random information is called telomeres. Cells have mechanisms to replace the lost portion of telomeres after each replication, but after a while they are disactivated, signalling the soon to be (senescence or programmed death) of the individual.
In cubes, this is about 3 months. So if you use up 3 weeks to make your first jar, do 3 transfers(2 weeks each) you then have about a month to fruit in before the start of senescence.
Using a master, you are always starting off with young mycelium so you avoid this problem.
Just remember the dates are not set in stone and it isn't instant. After 3 months it isn't BAM mycelium dead, but at around that tie cube mycelium startsto show signs of aging (less vigour etc)
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Newcomers guide-----> For all things shroomy
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Kanji
You don't even know!
Registered: 01/04/09
Posts: 18
Loc: Near the edge
Last seen: 2 days, 20 hours
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Telomeres [Re: Nibin]
#11959040 - 02/03/10 11:20 PM (2 years, 3 months ago) |
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Nono, telomeres are constantly be repaired by telomerase reverse transcriptase. The aging due to telomeres is only an indicative of cellular aging. I don't know what that means (If you do then you aren't learning anything by reading this.) but it does not indicate age based deterioration. Senescence is what this deterioration but we don't understand it completely.
A clear of example of how telomeres are not a problem through aging/cellular division is yeast. It just divides, no parenting or spores or anything like that. It has something to the order of tens or hundreds of telomeres on each strand but never runs out.
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Nibin
Getting there
Registered: 11/29/05
Posts: 4,480
Last seen: 4 months, 22 days
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Re: Telomeres [Re: Kanji] 1
#12038814 - 02/16/10 08:12 AM (2 years, 3 months ago) |
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Not exactly correct.
Simply put:Telomerase activity is extremely well controlled by living organisms as total activation equals uncontrolled growth (such as tumours) which is undesired.
The reason must pluricelular organism inhibit telomerase activity is due to this fact. They "prefer" to create new individuals with new telomeres than live "eternally" thanks to constantly renewing their telomeres. This reduces the risk of uncontrolled cell growth drastically butwith the tradeoff of ageing.
Yeasts are not a valid example in this case because as they are unicelular there is no problem of uncontrolled division as it just implies faster multiplication.
Uncontrolled division only becomes a problem as cells associate to create beings in which each kind of cell has a definite job and place to do it. If any of those cells divides uncontrollably it interferes with the wellbeing of the whole individual.
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Newcomers guide-----> For all things shroomy
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