I'm currently cooking up a shitload of boiled potatoes, to make a batch of potato-dextrose agar.
Got a load of ergot sclerotia in the fridge, getting geared up to culture them, just building a sterile glove box to keep the plates clean.
Time I think, for a shitload of donkey work, culturing plates and testing for ergoline alkaloid levels, exposing the wild-type strain to mutagenic chemicals and analyzing plate after plate post-mutagenesis until I come up with a viable production strain to take to the stage of culture immobilized in micronized alginate microspheres and culture in either bubble column or stirred tank bioreactors.
I want eventually to write a book on ergot culture, selection, the chemistry of all things lysergic, techniques for optimizing alkaloid yield; aimed at the amateur/hobbyist.
Something like 'all the way from wild sclerotia to acid'
