lanza

BRAVA!

BRAVA!

Smashing! Thanks soooo much! Keep the good work going.

I am still thrilled and delighted, I love when you update your lab notes. Keep on!

Is it difficult to grow (ophio)cordiceps in the lab ? Why ? How do you overcome those difficulties ? What culture media do you use ? What conditions do you keep to help growth? How do you study ant infection ? Do you expose ants from your colonies or you only collect already infected ants in the wild ? Keep up the good work.

I don't see why they should be one OR the other; why not showing all (and more) ? How do you gauge whether a compound could be used in medicine ? What makes it a candidate ? How would you go about finding out how do they modify the ant's behaviour ? Don't you need a theory of (ant's) minds to infer probable mechanisms of action ? I expect neurotransmitters in ants not to be extremely different from ours, would it be possible for them to modify our behaviour too ? To some extent other substances (also produced by fungi) can produce long lasting behavioural modifications on our brain; recently there have been studies in the utilization of Psilocybin to treat depression that have proven an action is still present even 6 months after ingestion of the active compounds.

Go, Charissa, go!