Morgan Q. Goulding

Morgan Q. Goulding

Americus, Georgia

International Snail Station

Itinerant Professor

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Published on Apr 01, 2022

Serendipity

What began as a bioweapon engineering project mutated into a basic investigation of the snail's conditional urge to make babies. A method was found - actually it was already known, but it was confi...

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Published on Nov 02, 2021

News & Plans

News & PlansAfter getting abundant evidence for a rapid, robust, and readily reversible inhibition of egg-laying behavior (due to a dietary regimen), we are going to ask whether the same snail ...

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Published on Oct 05, 2021

International Snail Station has New Crew!

In late August 2021 we were joined by excellent GSW undergrads Willa Dyer (Nursing) and Emily Hiers (Education) - they have been working as Data Collection Specialists in a set of experiments testi...

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Published on Feb 04, 2021

Going Offline

This project is going in a new direction, one that I don't want to talk about in public. Maybe I'll make an announcement later! morganQgoulding@gmail.com

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Published on Jan 29, 2021

Starting New Trial

Using the same 80 snails as in the previous trial where 'Monterey' Btk showed zero effect. Snails are randomized. This time using Dipel again - the same strain that previously showed a strong effec...

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Published on Jan 14, 2021

ERK! Got antibody to work.

Using Sigma's ascites-grown monoclonal antibody against diphospho-ERK, I now see the expected signal in a subset of micromere cells - the ones closest to the organizer cell 3D - in whole untreated ...

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Published on Jan 10, 2021

Results are in

Snail chow made with 'Monterey' Btk has no effect on reproduction or any other part of the snails' life, either during a ten-day feeding regimen, or for a week thereafter. Here is a table showing e...

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Published on Dec 20, 2020

Numerous tiny pink blobs

I wasn't expecting to report anything only 48 hours into the trial, but I've seen something maybe never seen before, and I can't keep it to myself. Egg production does seem already to be depressed ...

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Published on Dec 18, 2020

Starting new trial: Btk vs Bg (M)

Doing things differently in some ways this time. Only two groups per treatment, not four. Groups consist of ten snails each as before, but they get a much bigger volume of artificial pondwater - 15...

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The easiest, cheapest, fastest way to produce large amounts of some piece of DNA - just let bacteria do it for you, they are very good at it!
Mar 20, 2022
Eco-friendly and affordable molecular weaponry against snails that transmit schistosomiasis
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This Lab Note has almost 1.900 views, and not a single comment. That's funny.
Oct 08, 2021
Eco-friendly and affordable molecular weaponry against snails that transmit schistosomiasis
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Whatever happened to the numerous tiny pink blobs? They stopped appearing. Further trials did not show any significant effect of Bt on these snails.
Oct 05, 2021
Eco-friendly and affordable molecular weaponry against snails that transmit schistosomiasis
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Correction: the dose was about 0.3 micrograms per snail per day - not 30 micrograms. Darn powers of ten - if I were better at figuring them in my head I might be a millionaire instead of a thousandaire. Well, so the poison is a hundred times more potent than I thought - and might sterilize snails at a dose that doesn't actually hurt insects. Wow. Need to repeat this experiment. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Dec 07, 2020
Eco-friendly and affordable molecular weaponry against snails that transmit schistosomiasis
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PPS. Of course the median lethal dose of pesticides (for humans) is established based on experiments feeding the poisons to some other kind of mammal, rats mice and so on...
Dec 06, 2020
Eco-friendly and affordable molecular weaponry against snails that transmit schistosomiasis
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PS '...according to the US Code of Federal Regulations...' (This is talking about human toxicity of pesticides!) https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2005-title40-vol23/pdf/CFR-2005-title40-vol23-sec156-64.pdf
Dec 06, 2020
Eco-friendly and affordable molecular weaponry against snails that transmit schistosomiasis
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Dipel Dust is a commercial formulation of Bt kurstaki, a strain known to especially target larvae of lepidoptera (moth and butterfly). The label says it contains 0.064% Bt fermentation solids - all the rest is filler. ~~~ How much 'Bt fermentation solids' did each snail eat per day on average? 1.56 gdd/1000 mLsg * 0.064 gBt/100 gdd * 6.25 mLsg/chunk * 1 chunk/2 days * 1/10 snails = 3.1 x 10^-7 gBt/snail day ... So with the '1ppm' treatment, each snail ate, on average, about 30 micrograms Bt per day. ((( gdd = grams of dipel dust mLsg = milliliters of snail gel food gBt = grams of Bt fermentation solids ~~~~ Now if such a dose reduces reproductive output by more than 50%, then just how nasty a reproductive poison are we looking at? ... Estimating the snail's body weight (not counting the shell) at about half a gram, then that 1ppm dose is about 60 mg poison per kg body weight (mg/kg). ... The worst class of poison for humans, according to the US Code of Federal Regulations, is defined as 50% lethal at a dose below 50 mg/kg. ~~~~ How potent is the sterilizing effect on snails compared to the killing effect on insects? Actually not too much different. I am reading about a median lethal concentration in caterpillar food (LC50) of about 22 ppm.
Dec 06, 2020
Eco-friendly and affordable molecular weaponry against snails that transmit schistosomiasis
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The caterpillars all died - they needed an experienced caretaker. That's OK - they were only there as a positive control, in case the Bt had no effect on snails. It turns out the Bt works on snails!
Dec 05, 2020
Eco-friendly and affordable molecular weaponry against snails that transmit schistosomiasis
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I prefer to watch at 1.25x speed.
Nov 05, 2020
Single-cell analysis of whole-body pattern formation: Mama had a baby, why did its head pop off?
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Cool, I want to see them growing! Also, what about trophoblast organoids? Isn't this the kind of cell that the virus has to get through to infect the embryo/fetus?
Nov 01, 2020
Modeling Zika virus transmission from mother to child using uterine mini-organs
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Today (Tuesday 30 July): uneaten portions replaced with fresh helpings. (Same batch of gelled bacteria suspension, but kept at 4C for the past five days.)
Jul 30, 2019
Eco-friendly and affordable molecular weaponry against snails that transmit schistosomiasis
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Here's a silent movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njQdmhfAyRc
Jul 30, 2019
Eco-friendly and affordable molecular weaponry against snails that transmit schistosomiasis
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