I had some other work to do this morning (Figuring out some algae stuff involving 1000 L mesocosm up a mountain) so mystery species has been sitting alone in the lab all morning…..

Made it up to the lab today to find this. It’s probably from the fridge defrosting and not the creepy “algae”.

June 13th Update.

According to a few colleagues it’s either a plant, an algae, or a fungi. So that’s been helpful.

After a day with some sunlight I think I might be seeing some chloroplasts.

It seems to like the nutrient solution I added yesterday though!

I for one welcome our new plant, algae, or fungi overlords.

I was about to say “in a sensible lab people wouldn’t waste time with this, they’d autoclave the bottles and move on” but on reflection I can’t think of a single bio lab I’ve been in that wouldn’t immediately go “ooh, mystery algae, that sounds like a fun challenge; let’s devote multiple hours to identifying it for no reason”.

I need updates tell me about the algae

The mystery algae/plant/fungi/alien is stuck in the university growth chamber. With everything going on I probably won’t get to check in on it until September, possibly not until 2021.

So by that time it will have developed what, writing?

God I hope so, then I can train it to write my thesis!

This entire post is the most on-brand biologist thing I have seen in my entire godforsaken life. The moment this pandemic is over these guys have another crisis ready for us.