In a recent post to this mailing list,
Fri Oct 28 14:23:32 1994
Letter : 2625046 From: K. Nelson
Address : KXN4 at psuvm.psu.edu
Subject : Re: Prostatitis is annoying
Bytes : 993
To: microbiology at net.bio.net
As we are well aware from other newsgroups, Una is the last
person who should
suggest that someone is argumentative and has used the last of
their net
graces. Also doesn't Una work with plants? Just how much
experience do you
have with microbiology and PCR of different bacteria. Those of us
who use
these techniques on a daily basis in our research know that good
methodology
eliminates contamination. It is not an insurmountable problem.
I agree that the discussion has gone astray, but the case
still boils down to
seeing diversity of bacteria under the scope and not being able to
culture
what you see. What are these bugs? That's just good scientific
curiosity
and maybe we will learn something interesting. Are you aware that
it is
estimated that maybe we can culture 10% of the microbial diversity.
Does
that mean we should not use alternative technology to investigate
the other
90%?
Kim Nelson
Institute of Mol. Evol. Genetics
Penn State Univ.
First of all, I find these personal attacks on Una offensive. She has done
a great service to the Net community, and to me personally, by publishing
and updating the Biologist's Guide to the Internet, by facilitating the
development of biology-related newsgroups, and generally by being of
assistance. I feel that the birth of this particular mailing list has been
acrimonous, vindictive to Una personally, in spite of repeated, high-minded
comments about the need to get on with the "Science". If anyone can speak
about grace, or the lack of it, it is certainly Una, and not her attackers.
To further illustrate how antagonistic the above comment is, I note that
Una's comments were *entirely* pertinent to the problem at hand, including
her technical comments, notwithstanding the offputting remark in the above
post that she may not be a microbiologist (I don't know this as a matter of
fact).
Insofar as the comment about our ability to culture bacteria, I think that
the above estimate is ***WAY*** off. A more reasonable estimate is 0.1%.
Ask anyone using PCR to recover known species from the environment, and
they'll tell you that they recover FAR MORE uncharacterized 16s RNA
sequences than known ones: see Norman Pace's PNAS paper from March 94.
I wish I could contribute to a solution to bring peace on the Net within
the community of practitioners of Microbiology and others who are curious
and interested in it. Posts like the one above, and previous ones with a
similar flavour, make it awful hard to do.
Cheers one and all!
--
Sincerely,
Andre Sobolewski Microbial Technologies
andre_sobolewski at mindlink.bc.ca Phone & Fax: (604) 222-4632
