I was going to have a quick lunch of a delicious bowl of soup today and after a couple bites, I noticed a thick, dark curly hair in my soup.
Crap!
After my head shaving (see pic at that link) for the St. Baldrick’s fundraiser 2 months or so ago, which I did along with my student Ben, I have very short hair (~1cm) and it is sort of reddish-light brown…. so this wasn’t my hair.
What to do?
Could a single human hair have enough bacteria on it to make eating such soup dangerous? What kinds of bacteria live on hair that could also live in soup? Are there any papers out there on this?
Do we have a new term now–the Soupome (or Soup-ome if you prefer)?
Maybe we should isolate the gDNA from the soup with the hair in it and figure out which bugs are in there? Sounds cool to me and a possible paper.
Any takers? Jonathan Eisen? In addition to the Tree of Life, we could have the Soup of Life?
Take the poll above and let me know your thoughts on the hair in the soup question. Eat it or not?
I figure that if a single hair contains a ton of genetic code, then who knows what else it might be carrying. I’ll pass, but thanks…
I agree. I threw the soup away….
See http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com/2009/12/evolutionary-classification-applied-to.html … 2.5 years ago my friend Saul wrote about the soup of life …
Love it!
Extra protein???