My cryptopleurine plates won't gel

[Michael Lichten]

Two subjects:

1)  My dropout plates won't gel.  Check the pH.  Standard dropout mixtures 
are very acid and can lower the pH below the point where agar gels (or 
maybe it's being hydrolyzsed in the autoclave...).  At any rate I can 
always tell when I forget to add the NaOH to my dropout plates (which is 
more frequently than I care to mention) because that's what happens.

2)  Cryptopleurine.  As far as I know, there is no commercial source of 
crytpopleurine anywhere in the world today.  Call Jeff Strathern at the 
National Cancer Institute branch at Fort Deitrich in Frederick, MD for an 
amusing story about why.  Apparently it can be made only from a plant that 
grows in Australia and making it is such an unpleasant experience that no 
one will do it more than once.

Michael Lichten
lichten at helix.nih.gov