Morgan Q. Goulding

Nicole, thanks for your comment. Science is often negative results. Negative results are good. The best kind of negative result allows us to confidently conclude: A does NOT cause B. You get this conclusion only with a carefully controlled experiment. Everything - every thing! - has to be constant, except for variable A, which is well-defined. (Of course, phenomenon B has to be well-defined too!) (To be extra sure, you need a 'positive control' where factor X should reliably cause phenomenon B. Just to make sure everything else is set up right.) If factor A has no effect on phenomenon B, then, hooray! you have falsified a hypothesis about how something works. A is not a cause of B. Move on to the next hypothesis about what causes B. Most new hypotheses are easily shown to be wrong. Keep going through the wrong ones until you find any that do not seem wrong. In the case of my first trial with the bacterial food and snails, we aren't talking about such a well-controlled experiment. Many variables are uncontrolled and/or undefined. Even observable effects are not very well defined. That's OK, because THIS IS NOT SCIENCE. This is, in fact, what we call ENGINEERING. This is the game where we are aiming at a desired practical GOAL, and not urgently caring about how everything works in between a design and its result. The earliest attempts at human flight, for example, failed to consider a lot of variables that have since been considered - and maybe more that have yet to be considered. But if a human got to fly a little bit (hopefully landing safely) it was considered a *positive* result - an approximation of the desired goal. And then the tinkering would go on to improve it. For the snail feeding RNAi project, the good news is that the first trial had some obvious flaws, and the second trial can easily fix these. Since this work is not being done in a well-equipped molecular lab, it will contain unanswered questions, such as: are the bacteria making any dsRNA, and if so, how much? Does this material survive the food-making process? How much of it gets eaten by snails? How much of the ingested material makes it into the snail's gut? How much of this gets transported to cells throughout the snail's body? This engineering project cares only about two questions. Are we producing dsRNA? and does it have an effect on the snails!

Nicole, thanks for your comment. Science is often negative results. Negative results are good. The best kind of negative result allows us to confidently conclude: A does NOT cause B. You get this conclusion only with a carefully controlled experiment. Everything - every thing! - has to be constant, except for variable A, which is well-defined. (Of course, phenomenon B has to be well-defined too!) (To be extra sure, you need a 'positive control' where factor X should reliably cause phenomenon B. Just to make sure everything else is set up right.) If factor A has no effect on phenomenon B, then, hooray! you have falsified a hypothesis about how something works. A is not a cause of B. Move on to the next hypothesis about what causes B. Most new hypotheses are easily shown to be wrong. Keep going through the wrong ones until you find any that do not seem wrong. In the case of my first trial with the bacterial food and snails, we aren't talking about such a well-controlled experiment. Many variables are uncontrolled and/or undefined. Even observable effects are not very well defined. That's OK, because THIS IS NOT SCIENCE. This is, in fact, what we call ENGINEERING. This is the game where we are aiming at a desired practical GOAL, and not urgently caring about how everything works in between a design and its result. The earliest attempts at human flight, for example, failed to consider a lot of variables that have since been considered - and maybe more that have yet to be considered. But if a human got to fly a little bit (hopefully landing safely) it was considered a *positive* result - an approximation of the desired goal. And then the tinkering would go on to improve it. For the snail feeding RNAi project, the good news is that the first trial had some obvious flaws, and the second trial can easily fix these. Since this work is not being done in a well-equipped molecular lab, it will contain unanswered questions, such as: are the bacteria making any dsRNA, and if so, how much? Does this material survive the food-making process? How much of it gets eaten by snails? How much of the ingested material makes it into the snail's gut? How much of this gets transported to cells throughout the snail's body? This engineering project cares only about two questions. Are we producing dsRNA? and does it have an effect on the snails!

The hope is to shut down the action of a gene that is essential for life. The expected results of this gene shutdown would be (a) embryos fail to develop; (b) adult snails cease to lay eggs; (c) adult snails die.

The LB agar contains yeast extract, so it has some of that funky odor that helps make beer so attractive.

Now we wait. It might take a week or so to see results. I will check every day for egg masses, mark them with the date, and check on embryo development. If nematodes are a guide, embryo lethality should be the first sign of gene inactivation.

Transgenic lettuce is an alternative. But more expensive.

Consciousness-raising on water quality in the USA! We need more like this. Keep up the good work!

Nice! Can we see some data showing that the instruments work?

Thanks to all for the generous support! The contributions made so far will go a long way toward funding the true cost of startup efforts. (This include child care expenses and two additional airplane seats!) Currently I am gearing up for the initial set of experiments. If these give promising results, further steps in the project will test feeding RNAi methods on several other Biomphalaria species as well as species of Bulinus (another planorbid) and Oncomelania (a weird, viviparous freshwater neogastropod), each of which can transmit schistosomiasis. Here's a funny photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncomelania#/media/File:Oncomelania_minima.png

Thanks much Heike! Hello to your family too!

Thanks very much Heike! Hello to your family too!