Week 14. Semester 2. Finally started fungus broth culture!

This week was spent working with fungi. I am a bit side tracked right now since I have put all DNA extractions on hold perhaps until next semester. I have concluded I will need to assay the cellulase solution we purchased from Sigma before I continue attempting extractions. I have tried different pHs and Temps but nothing seems to be successful, so I will take a step back and determine those experimentally since Sigma has very little information available in the company's website about that.
In the mid time I focused my attention on isolating enzymes from the different fungi I isolated from infected Palo Verde trees, with Matt's and Amanda's collaboration. I started the broths to grow the fungi and hopefully get lots of exoenzymes secreted by them. I have four 250 mL flasks with Wheat Bran, Corn Steep, Starch and CaCl2 and Urea in water. Everything was autoclaved and is incubating at room temp and 150rpm. Tomorrow I will feed them a lactose solution to accelerate growth.
One of the fungus is particularly interesting and I will continue to work to identify it. I will not go into much detail about what I have on it so far because I would like to spend more time figuring out if what I have found is actually accurate. LOL. But here are a few pictures. 

 Same fungus grown in different media. Isn't it beautiful?!

 Broths in incubator/agitator

 After being exposed a few times I decided I will start inoculating fungal stuff in hood. Just as an extra precaution. I eat a lot of sugar and don't want my fungi to find out hehe

Collected additional specimen of decaying leaves.