Hi!
Swim is in the lucky position that he will receive a vial of Claviceps Paspali - Stevens & Hall F-140 in a few weeks. He will follow the patent: US3038840 for the growth and extraction of the goodies. If all goes well it
could yeild up to 1600 mg's of (iso)lysergic acid / L of broth.
But, swim is not totally hot in field of fungii growth, so a little advice from more skilled microbiologist's is really appreciated
The final growth is going to happen in a protected(such that it does not release Zn++ and Fe++ ions into the soln., which is supposed to inhibit the formation of lysergic acid derivates) 30 L steel vessel. It'll have built in clean oxygen supply etc. The setup for that one is quite obvious, but untill that point, there are some things which swim need a little advice on:
1)
innoculationOnce the critters arrive, they are to be innoculated onto some agar plates. How sterile does the environment have to be to protect them enough? Compared to innoculating e.coli. on agar, how sensitive are paspali(or fungii generally speaking). Swim was thinking of constructing a glovebox, which filtered the air though a NaOH soln. and NaOCl to sterilize the environment for working with the agar plates.
2)
Incubation liquid + Prefermentation liquid:In the patent the utillize a rotary shaker for these two steps. It should be able to do the steps without... They just need a little longer i would think. But the growth is supposed to be aerobic throughout the process, and yet the do not mention this in the patent for these steps? Does the shaking from the rotary shaker provide enough oxygen for the little beauties? Maybe a homemade clean-air supply should be utillized to compensate?
I'll probably(most definately) post more questions, as the project evolves! Wish swim luck, with the shortage of everyones favorite material and lack of precursor material we need some serious work in this field. If it really is as easy as the patent seems, there are fun times ahead!
Regards
Bandil