Hey Veeky Forums I need your help...

Hey Veeky Forums I need your help, for a project I'm exposing fruit flies to high amounts of alpha radiation and smaller amounts a of gamma. The contaminated culture is acting very strangely and I'm not sure what's going on. It seems like a white fungus has formed in the culture and it should have killed the population by now. However the flies are multiplying just as fast as the control culture. Any ideas?

Sorry for the sideways pic, I'm mobile fag right now

You've contaminated the project obviously.

Couldn't have, they've been isolated since day one

Anyways the growth isn't a problem, the fact that the flies are functioning perfectly fine is

Explain the fungus then

The media used to feed them has other things inside of it, that's why they have to put a mold inhibitor in the food. I'm not even sure if it's fungus.

I don't mind the fungus, I just need to know why it hasn't killed the flies yet

Doesn't smell like it either

Do the exact same shit except without the radiation.

If you get the same result then you're a fucking retard.

how are you generating alpha radiation?
are you shielding yourself?
are you insane?

I had a control culture, it didn't happen to that one

5 micrograms of Americium-241 and yes of course I'm shielding myself

Yes I'm using shielding, although with alpha it only takes something thicker than paper

it only takes one unlucky mutation for you to get cancer
Please do not fall for the radiation tolerance meme, like how much rad you could handle in a day... Yes you would survive but the genetic damage would build up

That's why I shielded myself. I'm not a fucking moron. Anyone who falls for that is just natural selection at work

>I'm exposing fruit flies to high amounts of alpha radiation and smaller amounts a of gamma

For what purpose? Is this just something you're doing at home for fun? What are you measuring/hoping to achieve by doing this?

Anyways,if you're doing this over a long period of time you should use smaller vials of food and change the flies over to fresh vials every week or so. You can use a bit of CO2 to knock them out to transfer them, throwing them in the freezer for a bit might work too. Just be careful because if the food get too runny they can get stuck when they fall into it and die.

Maybe the efficacy of the anti-fungal decreases over time. Maybe they fucked up and didn't add enough to that batch of food. Maybe by irradiating the container you created a mutant methylparaben resistant strain of mold. It's pretty much impossible to tell unless you do some follow up. Maybe streak some of the mold/fungus out onto some fresh food that you know has fresh anti-fungal in it and see if it grows, that will tell you if it's resistant or not.

That would probably be the most interesting outcome you're going to get out of this, assuming your're just blasting flies with radiation in your basement out of curiosity anyways.

>Americium-241
Did you get it from a smoke detector?
fuck, just file to get a better alpha source.

Even then, it's alpha. The genetic damage would be skin deep, and lead to melanoma in the worst case scenario. While cancer in any form sucks, skin cancers suck the least.

rip smoke detector

LNTfags are the worst

found a pic of OP

you're evil

fruit flies eat fungus too