Re: [DIYbio] Re: Could I harvest bacteria and fungi for cleaning agents at home?

Problem: most cellular lipids are, AFAIK, *phospho*lipids. That is, one
end is conjugated to a highly charged phosphate group, which allows the
lipids to form soluble micelles instead of clumping into droplets of
insoluble oil that can be separated by burette.

To extract "oil" from cellular paste, you might be able to find an
enzyme that cleaves this phosphate group from the phospholipids, leading
to a mix of insoluble fatty acids and free phosphate; this would give
you oil for your saponification (soap) and free phosphate as a
fertiliser, although I wouldn't recommend simply adding it to the soil
as it would be far too strong and prone to runoff. Feeding the
phosphate-rich byproduce to aero/hydro-ponic plants, or simply letting
it get digested into more complex cellular matter by bacteria or fungi
before use as compost, might be wiser.

On 05/11/12 02:24, Ulysses1994XF04 wrote:
> That seems like a pretty good idea! But what about during fall and winter?
> I was thinking bacteria and fungus because I could just grow it indoors all
> year round; perhaps if I built some indoor hydroponic system, I could
> plants indoors as well. What are some good, small oily plants?
>
> Also, how would you effectively harvest their oils and lipids? I was
> thinking maybe column chromatography? Maybe buy a buret online and some
> silica gel, pack it and run it through to separate oils from the cell
> components? Would that work? What kind of mobile phase would I need?
>

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