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magicbud
Stranger

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Pestalotiopsis microspora on agar.
#27440394 - 08/24/21 04:31 AM (2 years, 8 months ago) |
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Hi all. I have some Pestalotiopsis microspora (plastic eating mushroom) LC bought from Mycelium Emporium. I'm deciding if to do more agar testing, or if to go to substrate. Does anyone with experience know if any of these 2 plates look good or not? 
Thanks ✌️❤️✊
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CreonAntigone
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Registered: 05/30/21
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Re: Pestalotiopsis microspora on agar. [Re: magicbud] 1
#27440486 - 08/24/21 06:38 AM (2 years, 8 months ago) |
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Neat. Do you think there's a chance it starts eating the petri from the inside out?
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magicbud
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Registered: 11/21/10
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Re: Pestalotiopsis microspora on agar. [Re: CreonAntigone]
#27440580 - 08/24/21 08:15 AM (2 years, 8 months ago) |
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Haha, that would be awesome, I really hope so. That would be the easiest test I could hope for.
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PTreeDish



Registered: 04/22/18
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Re: Pestalotiopsis microspora on agar. [Re: magicbud]
#27442433 - 08/25/21 12:15 PM (2 years, 8 months ago) |
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This looks like an Alternaria-type mold, not Pestalotiopsis to me. P myc is generally white in color.
Also P. microspora is only known to break down one kind of plastic (polyurethane) if my memory serves me correctly, so you won't have to worry about it eating through your plate.
Suggest that you ferment some sterilized finely chopped polyurethane in a liquid broth culture of the organism when running your tests.
Here are two Pestalotiopsis I've isolated and barcoded for comparison: https://mushroomobserver.org/440515 https://mushroomobserver.org/448104
Edited by PTreeDish (08/25/21 12:21 PM)
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magicbud
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Re: Pestalotiopsis microspora on agar. [Re: PTreeDish]
#27444673 - 08/27/21 05:57 AM (2 years, 8 months ago) |
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Thanks so much for the advice, a great help. I put some more on un coloured agar yesterday. Hopefully will get it running this time. I just got a big pack of glass petris, so can start testing now
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c10h12n2o
serial dilutor



Registered: 01/21/15
Posts: 3,200
Loc: the abyss
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Re: Pestalotiopsis microspora on agar. [Re: magicbud]
#27461195 - 09/09/21 02:42 AM (2 years, 8 months ago) |
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the p. microspora i have worked with didnt look anything like that, it was white/grey
id be careful with that, kinda looks like its already sporulating
--------------------
  C10's Agar Guide + Tips and Tricks | c10's Flow Hood Build Guide "Partial knowledge is more triumphant than complete knowledge; it takes things to be simpler than they are, and so makes its theory more popular and convincing." "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies" ― Friedrich Nietzsche
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Syncrip
Bumbling Amateur


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Re: Pestalotiopsis microspora on agar. [Re: PTreeDish]
#27463724 - 09/11/21 02:44 AM (2 years, 8 months ago) |
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Quote:
Suggest that you ferment some sterilized finely chopped polyurethane in a liquid broth culture of the organism when running your tests.
Are you just using chopped up polyurethane and water for your broth culture, or do you add anything else?
Reading the original paper it looks like they were using some fancy polyurethane solution added to what I think is some variation of Vogel's Medium N for their cultures? I remember trying to price out how much it would cost to order all the required reagents for it and it was... a lot. I also don't know enough about media composition to try to figure out a "cheap and dirty" DIY replacement myself.
I think someone on this forum gave it a try by adding some kind of urethane varnish from Home Depot to a regular Karo or DME liquid culture recipe, but with limited success. I believe the take-away was that the fungi will metabolize all the easy-to-digest sugars present in the culture first before switching over to the harder plastic, but I read this a while ago so don't quote me on that.
I swear if all I needed to do was squirt the culture syringe into some chopped up plastic and water I'm going to kick myself for over-thinking this hard.
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gone-pear-shaped
Stranger than fiction

Registered: 10/30/17
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Re: Pestalotiopsis microspora on agar. [Re: Syncrip]
#27463859 - 09/11/21 07:24 AM (2 years, 8 months ago) |
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Varnish is a bad test. It's barely polyurethane. Not very representative. If I recall, it's actually urethane-modified alkyd resin. I welcome correction from any chemists or coating engineers, but it's basically a drying (polymerizing) oil that has already-cured small polyurethane molecules bonded to the oil molecules. It's like dissolving a resin (such as pine rosin) in a drying oil, except that the resin is bonded in instead of dissolved. If you want a sample of a pure polyurethane substrate, varnish is not it.
Warning in advance: I didn't read the paper.
You also want to maximize surface area, so I'd consider a foam sponge. Maybe use it in LC (blend it?), or pour agar very carefully so the sponge surface is exposed but wet with agar. I'd also read the scientific paper and make agar that's deficient in whatever nutrients can be gotten from the sponge. Force the mycelia to eat the sponge. And inoculate with a small grain so the mycelia don't starve while they generate enzymes to eat up the polyurethane.
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PTreeDish


Registered: 04/22/18
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The paper uses a liquid form of polyurethane called Impranil DLF as the sole source of carbon for the fungi, but you could and probably should try many different forms of polyurethane. Liquid is best as it increases surface area and bioavailability to the fungi but finely chopped or powdered could also work.
You just need to find a liquid culture recipe that excludes carbon. There's one in the paper and it looks like it uses pretty cheap ingredients, most of which can be bought for cheap at homesciencetools.com, ebay, and amazon.
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Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist

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Re: Pestalotiopsis microspora on agar. [Re: PTreeDish] 2
#27467260 - 09/13/21 07:21 PM (2 years, 8 months ago) |
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Here's what my Pestalotiopsis microspora culture looks like:
https://mushroomobserver.org/203296
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