Comments on: Blue Blow Fly – Cynomyopsis cadaverina

By: Eric

Eric — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 01:20:20 +0000

Thanks for that Oliemadottie! Gotta check into that one. I love bioluminescence (Who doesn't?)

By: Oliemadottie

Oliemadottie — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:00:59 +0000

I just did a google search for civil war glowing wounds and a couple of articles on it actually came up! The bacterium is Photorhabdus luminescens. cool.

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 01:32:00 +0000

well a little digging with "the google" led me to a couple of articles including the Department of Medical Entomology at the University of Sydney, that asserts that Dr. William S. Baer, a clinical professor at Johns Hopkins developed "a method of sterilizing fly eggs in mercury bichloride solution and then incubating them until they hatched into sterile maggots." This was in the 1920's and the practice became fairly widespread until the advent of penicillin, when it became forgotten (again). Dr Ronald Sherman and colleagues at the VA Hospital reintroduced MDT but the method they use for "surface sterilisation" is not given.

By: Brine Queen

Brine Queen — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 22:23:34 +0000

Kind of gross. But I wonder, how do you disinfect an insect? Same with medicinal leeches… how can they be sterile?

By: Eric

Eric — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 02:20:44 +0000

Cool, glowing wounds! If you remember the bacterium I’d love to hear about it.

By: Oliemadottie

Oliemadottie — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 00:54:11 +0000

Forensic entomology is a fascinating subject! – kind of on a different topic, but this made me think of a neat project I saw at ISEF when I attended it back in highschool about a bacterium that could have aided in healing the wounds of civil war soldiers – as well as made the wounds glow in the dark!