• xkforce@lemmy.worldEnglish
    81·
    10 months ago

    Then you find out that the lack of an ingredient results in the microbes producing the product lol.

    Certain algae for example, need to be “starved” in a way that results in them switching from conventional photosynthesis that produces glucose to photosynthesis that functions to generate Hydrogen and Oxygen alone. The Oxygen is used for respiration and the Hydrogen is essentially dumped as a waste product. They can only sustain this for relatively short periods before their stockpile of carbohydrates is sufficiently depleted. Which means these bioreactors need to be cycled through a fattening phase where the algae stockpile fuel and a starvation phase where they exhaust that stockpile while producing Hydrogen.

  • numberfour002@lemmy.worldEnglish
    25·
    10 months ago

    I’ve given you sunshine.

    I’ve given you dirt.

    You’ve given me nothin’

    but heartache and hurt!

    I’m beggin’ you sweetly.

    I’m down on my knees.

    Oh please,

    Grow protein!!!

  • girl@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    20·
    10 months ago

    me when i fail the assay i almost singlehandedly designed

    it me

    today

  • supercriticalcheese@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16·
    10 months ago

    Hmm object to the average chemical engineering work. We are mostly fancy plumbers, so we end up just sizing pipes and piping systems a lot .

  • DarkMessiah@lemmy.worldEnglish
    131·
    10 months ago

    So, is it literally just repeatedly creating the necessary conditions and hoping the stuff will react the right way? Or is it a strict process that needs to be done just so or it’ll ruin the whole thing? Or both?

    • Thrashy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      21·
      10 months ago

      Biochem is incredibly sensitive to seemingly minor changes in conditions or procedure. A former coworker of mine had to change careers after the procedure she had to follow to run the assays for her master’s thesis gave her severe RSI. She couldn’t alter the procedure for ergonomics, though, because even something like changing the angle that she held the pipettor at could throw off the results.

      In biopharma work, it’s not at all uncommon when trying to manufacture a biologic to find a process that works reliably in the lab but doesn’t give the same results when scaled up to production-size bioreactors, such that there’s often a whole stage of R&D devoted to taking a procedure from the lab and reproducing it on successively larger pieces of equipment, while working out all the tweaks and adjustments needed to make things work and optimize production.

      • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.mlEnglish
        4·
        10 months ago

        Fascinating. Do you know any good resources where I can learn more details like this? I’m doing undergrad biochem rn…

        • Thrashy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          10 months ago

          Alas, my knowledge on the topic is limited – I work as a lab planner, and what I wrote above is most of what I’ve gleaned over the years of designing process development and scale-up labs. Past a point I just ooh and aah appreciatively at the big robotized bioreactor arrays my clients are putting in. Hopefully someone with a deeper background can point you in the right direction!

  • PatFusty@lemm.eeEnglish
    10·
    10 months ago

    This meme didn’t show the revolving lab door, the giant corporate foot over the biochems head and the minimum wage employee who makes more money than them.