Quote Originally Posted by wingman View Post
Yes we did some work on that. We collected samples of the biofilm in the insulation room and using a 250mL sample examined fragments for bacterial, fungal, archaeal, and algal species using the automated ribosomal intergenic spacer analysis (ARISA) that amplifies the 16S-23S rRNA intergenic spacer region or so I have been informed. This allows detection down to the species and sometimes the strain level. We ended up with 5 DNA samples that were extracted using a phenol-chloroform process and analyzed spectrophotometrically for purity and DNA quality. The DNA samples were amplified using a PCR (polymerase chain reaction). The samples were then further processed and loaded onto an ABI DNA sequencer and run according to the ARISA protocol. In each sample algae and bacteria were present and in a majority of the samples there was evidence for fungi. There were also indications of Archea results and most probably new species but that is not that unusual. So the insulation is a microbial community of algae, fungi, bacteria, and archaea bacteria. As a side note I have observed what appears to be this same biofilm in spots in the Ginnie Springs cavern. Bill
I understood some of those words