Mold and Mildew

When I first read this Bible verse, from Leviticus, I said to myself, well that’s because they didn’t have Lysol, and Clorox.

Leviticus 14:33
Cleansing From Mildew

33 The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, 34 “When you enter the land of Canaan, which I am giving you as your possession, and I put a spreading mildew in a house in that land, 35 the owner of the house must go and tell the priest, ‘I have seen something that looks like mildew in my house.’ 36 The priest is to order the house to be emptied before he goes in to examine the mildew, so that nothing in the house will be pronounced unclean. After this the priest is to go in and inspect the house. 37 He is to examine the mildew on the walls, and if it has greenish or reddish depressions that appear to be deeper than the surface of the wall, 38 the priest shall go out the doorway of the house and close it up for seven days. 39 On the seventh day the priest shall return to inspect the house. If the mildew has spread on the walls, 40 he is to order that the contaminated stones be torn out and thrown into an unclean place outside the town. 41 He must have all the inside walls of the house scraped and the material that is scraped off dumped into an unclean place outside the town. 42 Then they are to take other stones to replace these and take new clay and plaster the house.

The Microscopic Bible. The entire bible reduced to the size of a postage stamp. You can easily read the above quote from Leviticus under a microscope.

Click on the above picture a couple of times to see all 1600 plus pages in this King James version of the Bible.

But then I thought about it, and back then many houses were built from straw bales, covered in mud or plaster.  If mold gets into that straw in the walls, it’s a major problem.

That’s why there are so many mold remediation companies today.  It’s a serious problem now, and was a serious problem then.   Here is a link to a mold remediation company that has really great info and pictures about mold.  The link shows your what the mold looks like, and tell about any danger from it.

http://mold.environix.com/mold-iaq-library/mold/

But it can be fun too, if you examine your mold and mildew under a microscope.  This makes many a fascinating science project.

Mold on whole wheat bread

Easy enough to find this sample of mold.  And now, the fascination factor. Here is the microscopic view of that bread mold.

Whole Wheat Bread Mold. It took about two weeks to grow because of the preservatives in the bread.

This photo shows the segmentation of the mold hyphae, and in the background you can see some mold spores.  this photo taken in brightfield, which means the illumination was from below, and no special filters were used. the mold was not stained, so this is how it looks in its natural color.

Below is another type of mold called Pithomyces.  This photo taken in brightfield also, and color is natural.

Pithomyces mold

Below is another photo of the same mold, taken in incident lighting,  this is where you use a fiber optic light from the top of side, and it shows how the mold spores look in nature.  Not mounted on a slide, or suspended in clear resin, the spores as as you would see them if your eyes had the magnifying power of a microscope.  This is a great way to photograph all sorts of specimens like pollen and hair, becuase you can really see how the specimen looks.

Mold in natural light Magnified 25 x

Mold can be good, and mold can be bad, so really these are relative terms.  Mold is just mold, and it doesn’t really have a good and bad to it.  We tend to think in these terms when we are affected in some positive or negative way.  Mold is really a fungus, and we enjoy lots of foods and drinks that make use of it.  That moldy bread in the picture above is made with yeast- a fungus.  Beer and wine are fermented with yeast as well.   Cheese such as blue cheese is streaked with blue mold.

C'est Cheese

  We call mold bad when it kills our crops.  Certain crops like grapes are affected by a mold called Botritus cinerea.  Below is a photo of this particular mold which is devastating to grape vines.

Botritis cinerea

Sunflowers are prone to a mold called Downy Mildew, and resistant strans of Sunflower have been developed to prevent this disease from spreading.

Downy Mildew - magnification 400 x

I obtained samples of Downy Mildew spores from the USDA and innoculated sunflower plants so I could observe and photograph this type of mildew. You are still thinking about that microscopic bible, aren’t you?  Well it’s for real.  Here is another picture taken at a higher magnification. Check it out.

Microscopic Bible Magnification about 20x

Microscopic Bible Excerpt Magnified about 100x

Back to our topic of mold.  So we are saying that mold is neither good nor bad in itself.  It can make so many wonderful things for man, and it can also cause harm to us, and cause harm to plants and animals.  So how can we judge mold?  Afterall, the wonderful discovery of Penicillin was nothing more than a mold spore found in a petri dish of dead bacteria.  The scientist Fleming noticed that his bacteria culture had died, and determined it was from mold- Penicillium mold, commonly found on Orange peels, and in many other places. Did you know that only a centry or so ago a broken leg was death sentence?  A bone that had broken through the skin meant that the patient would almost surely die of an infection.  Millions of lives have been save since the use of antibiotics, a very recent discovery, all based upon that discovery of a particular type of mold. Shakespeare said “Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Orange Mold

That gross looking mold in the orange can save lives.   Did you know that it is a primitive custom in the Amazon for people to hang orange peels out to dry, and then then make tea from these peels?  It is said to be a curative for illnesses.  Somehow these people discovered the medicinal properties of antibiotics, and have been using them for years.