Dear DanZ (good to hear from you again!) et al.,
of course you are right that not every autoclaving with sugar results
in dark plates, but it happens often enough to be cautious. And what
concerns the taste of the yeasties, this is not just anecdotes. I got
recently a strain on a dark (burnt sienna brown) plate from our neighbors
at the University who routinelly autoclave everything together. They
claimed that the yeast is sick and it indeed looked so; however, the
culture almost miraculously recovered on a light, non-caramelized
plate. So, it obviously does matter...
Fatima
P.S. Of course we DO have a real mailer on the Macintosh but I don't
want to fight with people who really work and look into the strain
collection files on average every five minutes (we are a crowded lab) :->
