Sorry to be a pain Vesp but can you take another look at the Merck index and see if you didn't accidentally give me journal details for the wrong article? I have looked at the entire year and that is all the author has published. It seems too much of a coincidence that I would happen to find a related article with the same details and topic.

Any chance Merck messed up?

Sorry to be a pain Vesp but can you take another look at the Merck index and see if you didn't accidentally give me journal details for the wrong article? I have looked at the entire year and that is all the author has published. It seems too much of a coincidence that I would happen to find a related article with the same details and topic.

Any chance Merck messed up?

I looked through Merk 8-13 today and they all mentioned this ref as written:
Microbial formation by Claviceps paspali over the hydroxyethylamide: Arcamone et al., Proc. Roy. Soc. (London), ser. B, 155, 26 (1961)

fishy....

To the best of my abilities, this is word for word typed out of the book.

Lysergide. N,N-Diethyl-d-lysergamide; d-lysergic acid diethylamide; LSD; Lysergausre Diethylamid; Delysid. C20H25N3O; mol wt 323.42 C74.27% H 7.79% N 12.99% O 4.9%. Microbial formation by Claviceps paspali over the hydroxyethylamide: Acramone et al., Proc. Roy. Soc. (London), Ser. B, 155, 26 (1961). Partial Synthesis: Stoll, Hofmann, Helv. Chim. Acta 26,944 (1943); additional data: U.S. pat. 2,774,763 (both 1956 to Eli Lilly & Co); Patelli, Bernardi, U.S. pat 3,141,887 (1964 to Farmitalia). Isotope-labled LSD: Stoll et al., Helv Chim. Acta 37, 820 (1954)

I'm thinking Merck made a mistake? Maybe the article actually says how to make LSD?

Has anybody got info or experience concerning reliable methods for reversion of auxotroph mutants? seemingly due to a mechanism involving uncoupling of regulator genes that normally repress synthesis of certain steps in metabolic pathways, such as tryptophan and methionine, reversion of auxotrophs of such amino acids apparently decouples the metabolite from its repressor genes, leading to increased production/utilization and thus alkaloid synthesis.

Actually this experimenter is thinking of going more towards novel, but legal (UK) analogs, the morpholide in particular sounds real tasty.

One thing I REALLY want to know, is why growing it in LC, the fungus degrades after several medium transfers, even eventually, in those cultures that are encapsulated in alginate. What is the mechanism of degredation, if I knew that, I might be able to find a way to combat it.


I keep finding more of the stuff, it seems to heavily infest the local grasses.
Oddly, I found it growing on Lolium species today, which at least in this locale, it doesn't seem to favour.

Anyone else noticed this? C.purpurea, unlike most of the Clavicipitacea (try saying THAT three times in a row whilst drunk haha) is a real whore, parasitizes more or less anything grasslike. Even when it is growing right alongside and in the middle of others, it heavily favours Bromus species and almost ignores Lolium.

Wonder if it is due to having to compete with the endophyte Neotyphodium lolii ?

I'll nail this bugger in the end, I just wish I had a proper income, then I could get it done in decent time.

On the alginate note, anybody got any suggestions for removing parabens and potassium carbonate from OTC gaviscon suspension?

For the K2CO3 I am thinking precipitation as the sulfate salt perhaps,

I will do when I can, I have a whole bloody load of refererences on my USB drive, I just need to get around to it, most likely when the DARI/opioid/A2 adrenoreceptor agonist combination currently circulating in my bloodstream wears off enough so I can open my eyes =D

Rotating nutrients you say? interesting. References would be most gratefully recieved.

As for starting new cultures from the parent, what does one do when said parent is all used up? that would take a fucking long time assuming one has a couple of big flasks full of medium+a little glycerol under medical grade sterile liquid parrafin in the freezer (sadly, I lack both the finance and the space to run a dedicated, efficient freezer, so for now, I guess I am going to have to eat a whole crapload of catfish, ice cream, mince beef and pizza, not all at the same time mind you, to make room)

I am thinking of trying the use of perfluorocarbon emulsions in both the medium AND the alginate microspheres, see just how much O2 one can achieve in there.

I will look up more on the encapsulation literature I have, electrostatic spraying through fine needles looks like the bee's knees so to speak, ehehe, can reliably produce microparticles down to 100 uM, perhaps with really narrow gauge needles even down to 50, or even 10uM.

What of H2O2? got any hints or tips there? unfortunately only OTC H2O2 here is mixed with fucking H3PO4, and I am not willing to BUY peroxide, its likely to get my door blown in with my....history.

Will have to look into producing it myself, IF there are references supporting its use.

I could get H2O2, its just that I have had my door kicked in, and all my most treasured posessions stolen from me, and not recovered for 8 months, on the accusation of the hideous crime of posessing both a 50ml bottle of acetone, and some 3% hair bleach.

Arrested for a crime that according to my lawyer, does not actually EXIST, not merely one that I shouldn't have been threatened with, but one that has no validity in the law of my country.


Apparently the right encapsulation technique can allow maybe 5 or even 6 medium changes, and for a 400% increase in yield, how the HELL is that not worth it? thats going from a 1g yield of lysergic acid end product to 5g (or is it 4, never was sure to add that first percent or not, I suck big time at math) either way, how much of a lifetime supply of lysergamidses is that going to be? and that doesn't count the dihydroergoloids one could prepare hydergine from, or the other random shite one might want to make dopamine agonists from, plus leftover unmetabolised clavines that can be fed to future cultures....it all adds up.


And simple? whoever mentioned simple, if one wants something enough, and its worth getting off one's arse and doing, then it is worth doing to the best of one's ability IMHO.

Just that one time I was caught in posession of some flash powder, a SMALL quantity of black powder, all taken out of fireworks as a kid, and left forgotten in the garage.

Got remanded for almost a year, forced to do a barely medicated heavy duty barb w/d and left to rot.

Then after that, nicked again, no successfull charges, just accused of  an offense which according to my lawyer, does not even exist, apparently citric acid, acetone, MgSO4, and hair bleach, buy them all together and I am Osama's best friend (I am as white as a ghost, I even got stopped on the local tram line without a ticket recently, and while faking illness, to avoid a citation, the pigs and ticket people commented how ill and pale I looked ....no daft bastards, I am just a gothic type who has a natural, healthy corpse-like pallor)

Only just got my glassware back yesterday from the time after THAT, they raided on pretext of 'suspicion of growing weed' basically, only with my condenser broken, PdCl2 'missing', etc.

Lawsuits are coming, and if they push too hard, then so is blunt force trauma.

The country does have its paki problem, big time, there have been several plonkers try to blow up trains and the like,  usually as reported on the news, with inane combinations of, and don't choke to death laughing, a combination of chupatti flour and hair bleach.

But, the pigs have it in for me, local bacon really does I think a combination of my biochem/org chem hobby and being autistic, donutscarfing cumguzzlers think I will be bullied easily and fuck off.

Its almost like they WANT to piss me off enough so I really would cause trouble.
DIY peristaltic pump? got any schematics you might wish to share? and what is the purpose of using such a beast?

What'chamean about my view of biochemistry? I'm just hoping I can come up with something akin to  a lysergic acid factory tailored to a suitable budget for the really piss poor, so anybody can have a shot, even those without access to GC/MS and an array of gene synthesizers, viral vectors for chopping and changing DNA  the easy way, etc,  I want to see it become accesible on a scale suitable for even the financially poorest chemist to viably pull a few bibles-worth of the good stuff out of his hat, like the proverbial rabbit.

Condia are unlikely to be polykaryotic and thus unlikely to give a viable production strain, although they could be used for isolation of strains for combinatorial breeding experiments.

C.purpurea appears to produce honeydew at least on plants, I kept getting my hands sticky while I was harvesting that plateful of sclerotia, especially after it rained. After licking my finger, it tasted intensely sweet, so my belief is that they may well produce honeydew/conidia on agar, although I have never read up on that, C.purpurea certainly produces it when growing parasitically.

Oddly, I noticed a great many dead flies that appeared almost preserved looking, like they had been saturated in glycerol perhaps, STUCK to the grass.

My guess is that perhaps they fed on, and were poisoned by the honeydew, and then became attatched to the grass by its stickyness.

Vesp, whilst ones plates may not originally be a monoculture, if one does obtain such, thing about ergot is, almost without exception as far as I know, it must be heterokaryotic to put out, homokaryons do produce alkaloid, but in mere trace quantities

For example, a paper I read comparing mutagens for producing good yielders, used the wild type as a control which was homokaryotic, whilst 600-1500mg/liter of medium [excreted alkaloid, uncounting IIRC, intracellular alkaloids] was definately doable, and upto 800mg/l actually commonplace, the wild type gave about 15mg/liter.

One other thing, is heterokaryons sometimes segregate in plate culture, I do not know if this also happens in LC, or if it is immobilized in alginate, although I imagine it may not do if immobilized, couldn't swear to it, but pardon me for being unscientific, but gut instinct tells me immobilized cells, the lessening of stress and reduction of freedom to, well, to fuck around and play silly buggers with the chemhack responsible for their care, may well not segregate, or at least, not do so easily.

Read a paper where they had a strain that produced a good yield, but in culture on plates, seperated into three seperate strains, sharply zoned and easily identifiable by visual inspection, one homokaryon did produce SOME alkaloid, not more than 100mg/l for sure, one produced miniscule traces (again no more than 10-15mg at most per liter), and one culture, the third strain tested negative via van urk reagent.

When these strains were again combined into a single heterokaryotic strain, production was restored again.