This week Annelie and I have been designing our experiments, our nutrients and our vessels and tools for the growth of mycelium in liquid medias.
We will be creating a diy magnetic stirrer to facilitate the growth of mycelium liquid cultures within an incubator box to achieve the ideal temperature for the organisms. This drawing is a box that has a computer fan inside with magnets attached, then a magnetic bar is placed within the liquid culture and when placed on the box, the stirring is produced from the rotations of the fan. This design allows the stirrer to be portable, and we can create a setup with multiple fans set up to allow us to stir many cultures at one time in a controlled setting.
Making the special containers for growth of mycelium. The jars are modified with two holes in the lid, one is stuffed with poly fill filling and the other is filled with RTV (autoclavable) silicone. The silicone is a seth healing injection port for the insertion of syringe needles, and the polyfill acts as a filter allowing oxygen into the jar.
This is a sample of dried mycelium that has been sterilized and becomes a kind of ‘fabric’.
Our cultures on the stirrer: batch 2
https://drive.google.com/a/newschool.edu/?tab=mo#my-drive
Documentation and lab notes:
And lastly, we have begun to create a modified petri dish setup with which we will test fungi’s response to electricity. We are interested in this after reading about fungi’s relationship with lightning and we are looking to simulate this interaction in the lab.