Into Unscientific

Chapter 184 Old Qiu, your illness is cured! (5.4K)

After collecting moss samples and briefly seeing its magic.

Xu Yun immediately affirmed one thing:

This is the reward given by the system!

And judging from the sanitation of the surrounding area, its effect seems to be more than just purifying carrion.

no doubt.

This is a very valuable discovery.

Or, strictly speaking, it should be classified as a quasi-discovery.

Because Xu Yun still doesn't know its purification method, and he doesn't know whether it is the moss plant itself or some kind of microorganisms living in it.

Then he carefully stored the piece of moss in the sampling box, returned along the original road, and climbed back to the ground again.

As soon as he showed his head, Guo Yuting and others who were waiting here stepped forward and said:

"God Xu, did you find anything underneath?"

Xu Yun nodded, pondered for a moment, and said:

"There is a suspected unknown discovery, but there is no way to make a conclusion about the specific situation."

"So, Xiao Guo, you ask the masters to cover this well first, and go to the next place to take samples first, and I will explain to the school."

Guo Yuting nodded half-understanding:

"Oh well."

Then Xu Yun watched the maintenance workers put the manhole cover on with his own eyes, and after confirming that the packaging was complete, he said to Guo Yuting:

"Xiao Guo, remember to find me on the fourth floor of the medical center on Friday. I will arrange work for you at that time. I have something to do here, so go ahead."

After speaking, without waiting for Guo Yuting to answer, he turned around and left the scene in a hurry.

At present, he does not know anything about the survival time of the moss samples or other information, so he must rush back to the laboratory as soon as possible to test the samples.

The distance from the southeast gate to the medical center is not too short, one is in the central area and the other is in the outermost corner of the eastern area. The actual distance is close to five kilometers.

So Xu Yun trotted for half an hour before arriving at the downstairs of the medical center.

But in the process of running, he suddenly discovered something:

I don't know if it was influenced by the "Lai Fu Jian Jue" practiced in the Northern Song Dynasty, my physical fitness seems to be...

Okay so a little bit?

Xu Yun's body is neither fat nor thin, but due to long-term use in the laboratory and library, he has always been in a sub-healthy state.

A five-kilometer run is good for running, but it is absolutely impossible to breathe evenly like now.

Could it be said that the increased physical fitness in the dungeon will also be fed back to the real body?

This makes some sense.

However, considering that the most urgent task at the moment is to study moss, Xu Yun can only suppress this curiosity in his heart for the time being.

He hurried into the elevator and came to the laboratory.

When he arrived outside the laboratory.

Qiu Sheng, Li Yan, Ren Yongcun, Zhou Peiyao and others had already received his notice in advance, and they all waited outside the door.

"Old Qiu, Xiao Li, Xiao Ren, Xiao Zhou."

Xu Yun greeted them one by one, then raised the sample container in his hand, and said:

"Time is running out, so I won't say polite words. Please work hard and help get this sample identified."

Qiu Sheng and the others nodded in unison:

"clear!"

When researching the fifth-generation imidacloprid, Xu Yun specially set up a WeChat chat group with seven members for the convenience of communication among members.

Just in the process of rushing.

He briefly described his discovery through the voice function of the group, and asked everyone to rush to the laboratory as soon as possible.

This was the scene where the people above were waiting outside the door.

Although the research group at this time has exceeded the deadline, it should be withdrawn theoretically.

However, because the imidacloprid developed by Xu Yun has broad prospects, HKUST generously lent this BSL-3 laboratory to Xu Yun indefinitely.

As for the nature of BSL-3.

Since some sensitive topics are involved, I will not introduce too much here.

In short, it is much higher than the general biomedical laboratory configuration.

After entering the laboratory.

Everyone quickly took their positions and quickly entered the experimental state.

mentioned earlier.

There are two possibilities for the source of the purification ability of the whole piece of moss:

First, moss is a new type of plant that has not been discovered before, which can secrete purifying substances.

Second, there are certain or even multiple unknown microorganisms associated or parasitic in the moss.

Therefore, the first thing Xu Yun and the others did was to determine the source of the moss' purification ability.

Fifteen minutes later.

Zhou Peiyao raised her head from the electron microscope and said to Xu Yun:

"Xu Shen, I checked the FOC and Huaxia Flora, and the moss is morphologically consistent with common aquatic mosses."

"In addition, the ITS of the gene has also been detected, and there is no sign of mutation. It can be concluded that it is not a new species, and it does not have the ability to purify itself."

Xu Yun nodded calmly.

The results of Zhou Peiyao's experiment are very clear, directly ruling out the first possibility.

Therefore, what has the cleaning effect should be some kind of microorganisms in the moss.

This answer is not surprising.

At present, there are more than two million microorganisms found on the earth, including bacteria, fungi, algae, etc.

As for the undiscovered number, it is even more, and it fluctuates greatly.

well known.

At present, there are two methods for estimating the number of biological species:

One is to directly invite taxonomic experts to assess how many species may still be discovered in the world through theoretical calculations.

Another approach is to extrapolate to global total species numbers based on species numbers in well-surveyed areas.

However, these methods have many assumptions and limitations, which make the estimated total species number vary widely.

The lowest estimated value was three million, and the highest even reached one hundred million.

A number with relatively high acceptance is proposed by Professor Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii at Manoa:

8.7 million, excluding viruses.

He estimated this number by applying the biological taxonomy class—that is, the number trend of the phylum, order, genera, and species that he learned in biology textbooks (org/content/113/21/5970)

For example, a certain animal phylum = 10 classes = 100 orders = 1000 families = 10000 genera = 100000 species. At the same time, the number of taxonomic levels of different taxa has a similar trend, and the higher-order classification is more stable than the species.

Therefore, after a series of simulations, a more credible total species number can be finally estimated.

This paper by Professor Camilo Mora is currently one of the most cited statistical papers in the world, and it can be regarded as a relatively authoritative inference.

8.7 million vs. 2 million.

Therefore, Xu Yun was not at all surprised to find some kind or even a variety of microorganisms in the moss.

Then he pondered for a moment, and said to Qiu Sheng:

"Old Qiu, let's do the 16S similarity test first."

Qiu Sheng nodded, quickly put on the gloves, and said:

"Okay, I'll do it right away."

Generally speaking.

If it is a strain grown in a petri dish, the difficulty of detection or comparison is often not high.

However, if the object is a sample enriched in nature, it is more troublesome to operate.

The 16S similarity detection mentioned by Xu Yun refers to the detection of the RNA component of the ribosomal small subunit.

That is 16SrRNA.

The length of this part is about 1500nt, and there are slight differences between different species. It can be regarded as one of the nine mainstream new detection steps.

five minutes later.

Qiu Sheng raised his head and said to Xu Yun:

"Old Xu, you are ready, what do you think the primer should be?"

Xu Yun thought for a while, and quickly said:

"1492R."

"okay!"

half an hour later.

Qiu Sheng raised his head and snapped his fingers:

"It's done, it's expanded, do you have the BLAST key?"

Xu Yun gave him a thumbs up to indicate that he did a good job, then walked to the console, and lost a bunch of keys in a crackling manner.

Students who have done new species testing should know it.

The boundaries of 16S similarity detection are actually somewhat blurred, because the detection similarity thresholds of different taxa are different.

For example, some are 97% and some are 99%.

Just usually.

If the similarity exceeds 97%, it can be considered as a species.

If the similarity is lower than 97%, it can be considered as a different species, and the next stage of detection will be carried out.

However, it is such a less refined detection method, but it is still a hurdle that many new substance detection cannot pass:

After most of the samples are tested, it will be found that the similarity is more than 99.99%, and they are the same species as other certain microorganisms.

all in all.

This technique is still reliable in terms of categorization.

After a while.

Qiu Sheng raised his head in surprise, his voice suddenly raised a bit:

"Old Xu, the similarity is 46.9%, 46.9%!!"

"There is no doubt that this is a new class of objects!"

Xu Yun took a serious look at him and confirmed:

"Is there only one new thing?"

"That's right, there's only one!"

Xu Yun nodded thoughtfully, and said:

"Then continue with the identification of phospholipid fatty acids and respiratory quinones."

well known.

New object identification generally has nine processes:

1. 16S similarity.

2. Morphological observation.

For example, the shape, size, flagella, etc. of the bacteria, as well as the determination of the optimum growth conditions.

3. Identification of phospholipid fatty acids, which is specific.

4. Respiratory quinones, that is, to see which kind of respiratory quinones are dominant, this has a specificity.

5. Molecular hybridization, that is, to determine the genome sequence, just a draft, and then compare it with related species.

More than 70% similarity is one species, and less than 70% is different species.

6. Utilization of carbon sources, see which carbon sources can be used, there are a total of 95 carbon source tests.

7. API kit identification, one aspect of physiological and biochemical identification.

8. GC content.

9. Gram staining.

Probably after these inspections, it can be determined whether it is a new species. (Note: I don’t know if you would like to read it in more detail? This kind of detailed process should not have been written before. It is actually very troublesome to find someone to ask. If it is still criticized, I will not write it next time.)

The fifth process, which is molecular hybridization, can be ignored this time - after all, the 46.9% measured in the first part is too obvious.

Considering the problem of time, Xu Yun divided several steps one by one, and several tool people, ahem, and members of the research team carried out the work simultaneously.

five hours later.

A final report is out.

"A new class of microorganisms belonging to the genus Arthroplexia, the morphology can be observed under a 1000 times oil microscope, and there are a large number of pseudofilaments in vitro."

"This false filament can be separated and combined with the target to complete a certain chemical reaction. Is this a bald attack?"

"A very small amount of new substances of 8,000 units can be enriched at a high density in a piece of moss, which is somewhat similar in characteristics to Lactobacillus acidophilus. Huh?"

Then looking at one column of the report, Xu Yun raised his head with some doubts, and asked Qiu Sheng:

"Old Qiu, the new product has the most obvious purification effect on food residue?"

Qiu Sheng nodded, pointed to a petri dish not far away and said:

"After our preliminary detection, this new type of microorganism can effectively curb the generation of ammonia, organic acids and sulfides in the residue."

"And it has extremely strong lethality against bacteria such as Neisseria and anaerobic streptococci."

Xu Yun was slightly taken aback:

"Neisseria and anaerobic streptococci?"

But soon, he reacted:

These two bacteria are one of the standard secretions of human saliva and gums:

80 million Neisseria bacteria can be found in every milliliter of ordinary saliva, and 1 billion anaerobic streptococci can be found in every gram of gum secretion.

It is normal to be contaminated with these bacteria when spitting out bones, tomato skins, or half-cut maggots in the cafeteria, and finally flow into the sewer pipe.

Then Xu Yun pointed to the report and said to Qiu Sheng:

"Old Qiu, is the new species only effective against food residues and saliva bacteria?"

Qiu Sheng pondered for a moment, then replied:

"To be precise, the new species also has a certain suppression effect on some other odor sources, but the effect is far less than that of food residue and saliva bacteria."

Xu Yun looked at him suspiciously and asked:

"What are the other sources of the smell?"

Qiu Sheng immediately held up his fingers:

"Xiaoba's small hamburger in the toilet, and a small piece of smelly socks that haven't been washed in two weeks that Xiao Li asked his roommate to bring, and..."

"Stop, stop, stop, stop!"

Suddenly, a black line appeared on Xu Yun's forehead, and he quickly stopped Qiu Sheng's description.

Then he forced himself to calm down, and continued:

"Okay, why don't you just report the data directly."

Qiu Sheng smiled wickedly, and picked up another report from the table:

"Compared to other odor sources, the effect of the new species on food residue and saliva bacteria can be described as against the sky."

"For example, a new plant we have enriched has a biological efficacy of only 8,000 units, which is pitifully small."

"However, it only takes 20 minutes to completely purify a 0.3 cubic centimeter of food residue."

While talking, Qiu Sheng couldn't help but made an 8 sign in front of Xu Yun:

"It's only 8,000 units. Look at the current penicillin units, which one doesn't start at the million level?"

"Old Xu, do you know what this means?"

Xu Yun was silent for a moment, then raised his eyebrows:

"It means your bad breath is cured?"