Chapter 2 The Characteristics of Life. Chapter 8 Photosynthesis. Chapter 21 Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering. Chapter 4 Cells.

The full textbook of The Science of Life is now available on the @CJ_Fallon website. Contact cjfallon if you need a login. The Research and Investigations Book should be also be available very soon, but in the meantime, here are a few sample chapters 1/2.

For those of you who missed it, here is a link to the recording of the webinar, which will be posted on the @CJ_Fallon website Monday.

A big thank you to everyone who registered for our live webinar introducing our new book The Science of Life on Wednesday evening, Barbara and I were thrilled to receive so much encouraging feedback from teachers reassured about approaching the new Biology spec.

RT @CJ_Fallon: LC BIOLOGY - *Live* WEBINAR on Wednesday!! A webinar on our new textbook, The Science of Life, will be held on Wednesday eve….

RT @Dek0h: Samples chapters of our new book The Science of Life now online:.Ch 7 Enzymes & Chapter 8 Photosynthesis..

Samples chapters of our new book The Science of Life now online:.Ch 7 Enzymes & Chapter 8 Photosynthesis.Ch 2 Characteristics of Life & Chapter 3 Biomolecules.Ch 11 Response & Chapter 12 Immunity and Disease.

Save the date! This Wed 9th April, Barbara Kelly and I will run a live webinar (kindly hosted by @tuition_centre) on how our new book, The Science of Life from @CJ_Fallon, will support students and teachers through the new Biology spec. Register here:

RT @Education_Ire: Minister for Education @HMcEntee TD announces €100,000 in music education grants |.Fógraíonn an tAire Oideachais @HM….

Thanks to a 1978 paper from Dr TM Cogan of @teagasc , I'm pretty sure this lab will be my students standard method for investigating factors affecting microbial growth. 💙Lactobacilli.

10/x And the final data? For different temperatures, here are the results. Microbial growth as the inverse of pH. Rate of growth as the slope of the graphs. Job done. Lovely bit of Maths for our seniors to get their teeth into in preparation for their AAC investigation too.

9/x A drop of any live yogurt into 20 ml screwcap tube of MRS broth, and my TYs (the research team!) has sets of cultures at different incubation temperatures, different solute concs (NaCl) and different antimicrobial cleaners.

8/x Lactobacillus are unbelievably easy to grow. They grow in MRS broth or on MRS agar which is selective for them, and not much else will grown in this medium which is great for novice student microbiologists. Also super safe to grow as they are food-grade microbes.

7/x You can use these narrow-range pH strips, or a similar liquid indicator on samples, or use a pH meter (I used a wireless Pasco one that links to a tablet or phone, they are great). This way you can easily take data points over 2-3 days (the length of time for the culture).

6/x The pH of the culture decreases more or less proportionately with the increase in optical density, the lab standard way of measuring growth. By measuring the pH of a Lactobacillus culture at intervals over the course of a few days, we have a simple measure of microbial growth

5/x Anyway, I did a literature search and initially couldnt find anything, until I went back in time enough to come across this article from our very own TM Cogan from Teagasc, published in 1978. "Determination of Growth Rates of Lactic Starter Cultures". Thank you Dr Cogan!

4/x I had been playing around with a colorimeter app on the phone to act as a kind of spectrophotometer to measure turbidity, but it was proving, well, a bit of a pain tbh.

So I thought that maybe someone has looked at the correlation between the optical density (standard lab method for measuring the rate of growth) of a culture of Lactobacillus and the pH (the lactic acid production).

I am a big fan of the lactic acid bacteria, as some of you might know, and have been developing school labs that use these food-grade microbes for years now. The LAB are easy to grow, contamination is minimal (the growth medium is so selective), and safe