Using dietary amino acid supplements in media

[Aubrey]

For a high school project (meaning I really need to keep this cheap as possible) I'm making a media to place tissue silk glands and spinners from spiders. I'm experimenting to find what media produces the most amount of silk. One of my proposed media is just a simple ringer solution, but with added amino acids that the gland uses up rapidly such as valine, methionine, threonine etc. In order to put only these solutions into the media (at the rate they are present in the hemolymph of course) I thought I could just buy some body building dietary supplements that do the individual amino acids. I thought I could sterilize them with a vacuum filter. 

How should I prepare the supplements? I assume there are other components such as salts in the pills- will I be able to separate that from amino acids? 

[Xabier Vázquez-Campos]

Just use yeast extract.

Maramorosch Medium, one of the earliest culture media for insect cells (yes, I know spiders are not, but it's the closest...) is relatively simple. But the problem is that you are going to need FBS or a substitute (like inany medium like this). Previous insect cell culture media used some protein hydrolysate instead of FBS. Not as good, but might be a solution

http://www.himedialabs.com/TD/IM002.pdf

[John Griessen]

On 11/07/2016 09:23 PM, Aubrey wrote:
> ringer solution, but with added amino acids that the gland uses up rapidly such as valine, methionine, threonine etc. In order to
> put only these solutions into the media

Sterilizing with a micron filter seems OK for your uses of a few hours for an insect part. Doing careful quantitative
preparations with Ringer's and also everything-else-the-same-except-one-new-variable, Maramorosch Medium, swapped for Ringer's
would be a good read. Then if all that gives results, you could try flowing new solution past the spinarette
to see if time of silk production could increase. Any of those experiment preparations compared would be a good read.