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Subculture and maintenance of slime mold,
Physarum polycephalum
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As soon as the slime mold plates are delivered, start making
PDA plates- 19.5g PDA in 500mL dH20. Autoclave in a 1000mL bottle.
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Add 500 microliters of AMP to the solution when the
bottle is cool enough to handle comfortably.
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Pour the plates -
thick!
(almost to the brim of the plate) - and leave to harden. Mark with
two blue stripes.
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Once the plates have hardened, sprinkle a generous amount of autoclaved oats
on them.
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Take a metal spatula and sterilize by ethanol flaming. Out of the stock
plates of slime mold, select good looking, bright yellow strands/globs of
protoplasam and
with the sterile spatula, cut/transfer that piece to your new, oat sprinkled
PDA plate. Do about 2 - 3 globs for each plate.
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Close the plate and leave in a cool dark place. Seal the plate with a
strip of parafilm to prevent desiccation.
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Check on the slime mold every day, make sure you give them plenty of
autoclaved oats if it looks like they're running low, and transfer them to new
PDA plates if the old plates look overgrown. Keep your slime mold happy,
yellow and slimy--you don't want them getting all
sickly, brown, dark or fungusy!
- If your plate dries out or the slime mold starts to run low on food, it
will enter a dormant part of its lifecycle. Dormant slime mold does not
exhibit protoplasmic streaming and is not useful at all in the lab. Frequent
subculture will keep streaming slime mold streaming.
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