History of Neurospora microsurgery videos

The original tape recording was made in 1970, when half-inch reel-to-reel video tape first became available. The bulk of the tape was produced with a demonstrator tape recorder in a two-week stint. I assumed it could be edited later, but learned that such editing machines were not available locally. The original tape was later copied to a videocassette; the first videocassette was recopied to a new one several years later; and this new one was the source for the compact disk. Some detail has been lost, but to my knowledge, it is a unique record, and I hope it will be of some value.

I had three objectives in mind when I produced the tape. One objective was to use portions of the tape in classes to illustrate such phenomena as growth and cytoplasmic flow in living cells.

Another objective was to settle the argument over whether nuclei could actually migrate in the hyphae.

The last objective was to produce a tape for teaching others how to carry out microsurgery on Neurospora. The last objective turned out to be essentially unattainable for a number of reasons.

The magnifications given in the commentary are those on a monitor with a 15 inch screen.

The "ergosterol" crystals mentioned were subsequently shown to be protein, and are probably the same as the "Woronin Bodies" described and named.by Buller in other fungi (A.H.R. Buller. Researches on Fungi. Vol.5, Hafner, N.Y. 1958.)

J.F. Wilson

The complete video was nearly 1 hr in length and was broken into separate segments by the KU Med Instructional Media team for ease of presentation.
KMC

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Last modified 1/30/03 KMC