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stories of scientific discovery
https://www.mynewlab.com/blog/accidental-scientific-discoveries-and-breakthroughs/
Accidental Scientific Discoveries and Breakthroughs
Home » Blog » Accidental Scientific Discoveries and Breakthroughs
[Image: lab header]
14 Dec
Accidental Scientific Discoveries and Breakthroughs MarcusCannon2022-01-05T15:55:31+00:00
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Some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs have been accidentally discovered from within a laboratory
Misjudging or miscalculating in the lab can be hugely costly for a research team – having invested significant time, money and effort into an unsuccessful venture. However, sometimes lab workers get lucky and accidentally discover a scientific principle or breakthrough which would otherwise have remained unknown. Here we have a look at ten of the world’s greatest accidental scientific discoveries.
Penicillin
One of the biggest medicinal breakthroughs in history came about entirely by accident. Sir Alexander Fleming interrupted his experimentation with the influenza virus for a two week holiday and when he returned he found that a mould had started to grow which deterred the virus. Penicillin was born and is now used to treat everything from acne to pneumonia.
Viagra
Originally aiming to develop a treatment for angina, Pfizer found their new prototype drug was igniting erections in men during the tests. A quick PR campaign with Pele later and Viagra was born.
Plastic
A little over a century ago, the Belgian scientist, Leo Baekeland, accidentally made plastic. Originally naming the mixture of formaldehyde and phenol after himself, Bakelite, the scientist accidentally revolutionised pretty much everything in production and manufacturing.
The Microwave
As WWII was drawing to a close, engineer, Percy Spencer, was attempting to develop energy sources for radar equipment. Whilst that didn’t work out, Spencer did realise the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted, and went on to test his accidental invention by making popcorn.
Vaseline
The fantastically named Robert Chesebrough was so enamoured when he accidentally discovered Vaseline that he started using it for all kinds of purposes – even eating a spoonful every day. Chesebrough was originally on the hunt for oil when the petroleum jelly made itself known.
Strikeable Match
At the end of an amazing chain of events, English pharmacist, John Walker, accidentally got a lump of his fun new mixture of antimony sulphide and potassium chlorate on the end of his mixing stick. Naturally, he tried to scratch it off and it burst into flames – a terrifying but incredible breakthrough.
Gunpowder
Most of these accidental discoveries came about as a result of scientists trying to create something similar to the final product. However, 9th century Chinese alchemists couldn’t have been further from success when they accidentally developed gunpowder. They were trying to find an elixir for eternal life.
Mauve
Mauve may not be the world’s most exciting colour, but teenage chemistry student, William Perkins, will have been delighted when he accidentally created it using tree bark and coal tar. Perkins managed to isolate the colour, developing the world’s first ever synthetic dye.
Corn Flakes
The daily breakfast of millions of people all around the world, Corn Flakes were invented when Will Keith Kellogg accidentally left some wheat on the boil. The world’s most famous cereal was created and a dynasty was born.
Anaesthesia
During the early 1800s, ether and nitrous oxide were both widely abused by folks attending ‘laughing parties’. When the laughter died down, someone pointed out the substance could help mask pain, and anaesthesia was born.
https://interestingengineering.com/15-accidental-science-discoveries-that-changed-the-world
15 Accidental Science Discoveries That Changed the World
Here are 15 revolutionary scientific discoveries that were complete accidents.
[Image: Christopher McFadden]
By Christopher McFadden
Mar 04, 2020
[Image: 15 Accidental Science Discoveries That Changed the World]
1, 2
"Necessity is the mother of all invention," as the famous saying goes. But there have also been quite a few times that some major scientific and technological inventions were a complete fluke.
Here are some of the most notable examples.
RELATED: 9 INCREDIBLE ACCIDENTAL SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES THAT HAVE CHANGED THE WORLD
What important scientific discoveries were an accident?
So, without further ado, here are some scientific discoveries that were a complete accident. This list is far from exhaustive and is in no particular order.
1. Quinine was discovered by complete accident (apparently)[Image: accidental discoveries quinine] Source: Forest and Kim Starr/Wikimedia Commons
Originally found in the bark of the cinchona tree, the discovery of this important anti-malarial compound was a pure accident.
While it was being used by Jesuit missionaries in South America to treat malaria since 1600, they were taught about the substance by native Andean peoples in the first place.
According to their legends, the first discoverer was a feverish Andean man who was lost in the jungle. Suffering from malaria, he drank from a pool of water at the base of a cinchona tree.
Although bitter to the taste, his fever lifted and he survived to pass on what he had learned.
2. X-rays were also discovered by accident[Image: accidental science discoveries x ray] Source: Michael Dorausch/Flickr
While working on a cathode ray tube, German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen noticed something strange was happening. Despite the tube being covered, he saw a nearby fluorescent screen glow when the tube was on and the room was darkened.
He tried to block the apparently invisible rays but most things didn't have any effect. When he tried using his hand he noticed that he could see his bones in an image projected on the screen.
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Amazed, he replaced the screen with a photographic plate and the first x-ray ever was created.
3. The microwave was also a complete fluke[Image: accidental discoveries microwaves] Source: alexunderwood910/Flickr
Back in the 1940s, Percy Spencer was working on a radar-related project. While testing a new vacuum tube, he noticed that a chocolate bar in his pocket had melted more rapidly than expected.
Intrigued, he starting aiming the tube at other objects like eggs and popcorn kernels to see what would happen. After they too became heated, he concluded that microwave energy could have a new interesting application.
Microwave ovens soon followed.
4. "Velcro" was another accidental discovery[Image: accidental discoveries velcro] Source: marcos.sa/Flickr
Also back in the 1940s, a Swiss engineer called George de Mestral, made an interesting discovery while walking his dog. When they returned home he decided to examine the burdock seeds that had stuck to his clothes.
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He noticed they had lots of tiny hooks that easily attached and stuck firmly to fabric and fur. de Mestral realized he could create a new fastening system using the concept, and "Velcro" was brought into existence.
5. The discovery of radioactivity was another by accident[Image: accidental discoveries radioactivity] Source: Jorg Weingrill/Flickr
Henri Becquerel, while enamored with x-rays back in the late 1890s, he decided to figure out their connection with phosphorescence. After trying to expose photographic plates using uranium salts, he was hoping to absorb "x-ray energy" from the Sun.
After thinking he needed sunlight for the experiment to work, the sky was overcast and he abandoned it for the day. But when he developed the previously unexposed plates he noticed that they had some fogging.
It was clear to Becquerel that the uranium salts must be the culprit and were emitting some kind of strange rays. The phenomenon of radioactivity had been discovered.
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6. Sweet'N Low was found by accident[Image: accidental discoveries saccharin] Source: Open Grid Scheduler/Flickr
Sweet'N Low, or saccharin, was discovered by chance in 1878 by Constantine Faglberg. He was analyzing coal tar at the time.
After forgetting to wash his hands one day, and picking up a roll to eat, he noticed that it tasted unusually sweet. He later started tasting (as you do) some of the other compounds he'd created and found that one combining o-sulfobenzoic acid with phosphorus chloride and ammonia was the culprit.
He filed for a patent in 1884.
7. LSD was also found by accident[Image: accidental discoveries LSD] Source: Manel Torralba/Flickr
Back in the late-1930s, a scientist called Albert Hofmann was studying a chemical called Lysergic acid. While working with it, he accidentally tasted it and felt restless and dizzy.
At home, he had some "interesting" dreams and decided to experiment with dosages when he returned to the lab on the 19th of April, 1943 -- what is with scientists and tasting random chemicals?
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This was the first planned experiment with LSD -- and it wouldn't be the last.
8. Penicillin was another accidental discovery[Image: accidental discoveries penicillin] Source: Rajitha Ranasinghe/Flickr
Sir Alexander Fleming, in 1928, noticed that mold had started to grow in a petri dish of one Staphylococcus bacteria cultures. While trying to salvage cultures unaffected by the mold, he noticed that bacterial colonies would not grow near the mold.
Fleming soon realized that the mold must be releasing some kind of substance that inhibited bacterial growth. Penicillin was later introduced in the 1940s, saving countless lives since.
9. Insulin was also a freaky discovery[Image: accidental discoveries insulin] Source: Alan Levine/Flickr
Back in the late-1880s, two doctors were attempting to uncover the pancreas' role with digestion. After removing one from a test dog, they noticed that flies were gathering around the dog's urine.
After testing the urine, they noted that it had a high sugar content.
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They realized they had inadvertently given the dog diabetes.
A little later, further experiments during the 1920s built on their work and were able to isolate the pancreatic secretion known as insulin.
10. Vulcanized rubber was also an unintentional discovery[Image: accidental discovery rubber] Source: Michael Hänsch/Flickr
Charles Goodyear spent many years trying to turn rubber into something that wouldn't freeze when it's cold or melt when it's hot. After trying many things, he eventually tried using some sulfur.
In frustration, he tossed it into the air, as the story goes, and it landed on a stove. But instead of melting it charred creating a leathery, heat-resistant and waterproof substance.
Vulcanized rubber was born.
11. Teflon was also a fluke[Image: accidental discoveries teflon] Source: George Redgrave/Flickr
Roy Plunkett was working in the Dupont Company's Jackson Laboratory in 1938 when he started researching new refrigerants. One such substance he experimented with was tetrafluoroethylene (TFE) gas.
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After returning to an open cylinder he'd stored some of the gas in, he discovered a strange white powder on the inside. Curiosity compelled him to conduct some tests on it, and he found that it was heat resistant, had low surface friction and was inert to corrosive acids.
It was, effectively, an ideal substance for cookware.
12. Vaseline was also an accident[Image: accidental discoveries vaseline] We wouldn't recommend eating, Source: Don O'Brien/Flickr
Back in the late-1850s, one chemist Robert Chesebrough was investigating an oil well in Pennsylvania. He caught upon a rumor of some strange substance called "rod wax" that intermittently gunked up some of their machinery.
He also heard that workers at the well had been using it to soothe cuts and burns on their skin and took some home to conduct tests.
Vaseline, or petroleum jelly, was soon a thing.
13. Shatterproof glass was also discovered by accident[Image: accidental discoveries safety glass] Source: Yuya Tamai/Flickr
Shatterproof glass, like the kind used in your car's windshield, was also an accidental discovery. When Edouard Benedictus, a French scientist was experimenting with cellulose nitrate in 1903, he accidentally dropped the flask it was contained in.
The flask broke but didn't shatter. Not only that, but the flask, though broken, maintained its shape.
Benedictus postulated that the plastic coating had somehow helped maintain the glass' shape. Safety glass had been discovered.
14. The dinosaur, Deinonychus, that inspired Jurassic Park's version of the Velociraptor was an unintended discovery [Image: accidental discoveries deinonychus] Source: A K M Adam/Flickr
While Velociraptors are indeed a real dinosaur, their size and stature in the Jurassic Park franchise certainly are not. They are more akin to Velociraptor's big cousin Deinonychus.
Deinonychus, m eaning "terrible claw," was found by complete accident in the 1930s. While searching for a completely different dinosaur, Tenontosaurus, Barnum Brown stumbled across the remains of this iconic carnivorous dinosaur.
15. The first evidence of the "Big Bang" was also an accidental discovery
Astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson noticed some strange yet annoying "noise" from their large antenna while observing the space between galaxies. The pair also noticed that the odd buzzing sound appeared to be everywhere they pointed their apparatus.
What they had inadvertently stumbled upon was the cosmic microwave background -- the leftover radiation from the "Big Bang."
They shared the 1978 Nobel Prize for their discovery.
https://www.npr.org/2016/02/24/467805055/whoops-twelve-tales-of-accidental-brilliance-in-science
Science
Whoops! 12 Tales Of Accidental Brilliance In Science
February 24, 20165:54 PM ET
Adam Cole
Author Isaac Asimov once wrote, "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but, 'That's funny ... ' "
Good scientists search for the significance of surprises, coincidences and mistakes. With a little curiosity and perseverance, they can turn unexpected incidents into new insights.
The Golden Mole Award, from NPR's Skunk Bear, celebrates these moments of serendipity in science. We asked for examples of happy accidents in the lab and in the field from the past few years ... and 300 submissions came pouring in.
Here are a few of our favorite stories — a shortlist of Golden Mole Award nominees.
1. WHEN FROGS ATTACK
Carlos Jared was doing fieldwork in the jungles of southwest Brazil when he picked up a harmless-looking frog. The frog twisted and thrashed, butting Jared's hand with his head. Excruciating pain spread up Jared's arm, and for the next five hours he was in agony.
He had inadvertently discovered that frogs can be venomous.
Many amphibians secrete toxins through their skin, but the frog Jared picked up — Greening's frog — was the first discovered to actually force those toxins into a predator's bloodstream. When attacked, it retracts the skin around its upper lip, revealing bony spines. Jared and collaborator Edmund Brodie discovered that a gland at the base of each spine produces a toxic mucus that is twice as potent as the venom of a Brazilian pit viper.
[Image: Circuit]
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Courtesy of David Awschalom
[Image: Circuit]
Courtesy of David Awschalom
[Image: Quantum Engineering Lab]
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Courtesy of David Awschalom
[Image: Quantum Engineering Lab]
Courtesy of David Awschalom
2. A LIGHT BULB MOMENT
Engineer David Awschalom had just moved from the University of California, Santa Barbara to the University of Chicago when his research hit a snag. His team was investigating a strange material that they hoped could someday be used in quantum computing — a thin sheet of atoms on a bed of strontium titanate.
But their experimental results were full of incomprehensible noise. It took months for graduate students Andrew Yeats and Peter Mintun to isolate the problem: the lab's new energy-efficient light bulbs, installed per university policy.
The bulbs happened to emit the exact wavelength of light that could polarize the strontium titanate and influence their new material's electrical properties. With a little tweaking, they were able to use this wavelength to gently and rapidly "paint" electrical junctions on the fragile material. Shine light of a second specific wavelength, and the circuits were erased. What amounts to an optical Etch A Sketch could someday help scientists build quantum computers.
[Image: Blue Pigment]
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Courtesy of Mas Subramanian
[Image: Blue Pigment]
Courtesy of Mas Subramanian
[Image: Mas Subramanian Blue Pigment]
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Courtesy of Oregon State University
[Image: Mas Subramanian Blue Pigment]
Courtesy of Oregon State University
3. OUT OF THE BLUE
Blue is a notoriously tricky pigment. It's rare in nature — the stone originally used to produce blue paint was once worth more than gold. So humans tried to manufacture the blues they needed ... with mixed results. The dyes and paints they came up with often turned out to be poisonous, expensive, impermanent — or all three.
Mas Subramanian wasn't at all interested in this problem. In the department of chemistry at Oregon State University, he was looking for materials with novel magnetic properties to use in advanced computer hard drives. He would mix up likely chemicals and bake them in a furnace at 2,000 degrees Farenheit. But when he added manganese oxide to the recipe, he got a colorful surprise — a pile of bright blue powder.
The new pigment is stable and nontoxic. It reflects infrared radiation, so it might help keep buildings and vehicles cool. Subramanian is working with paint manufacturers and energy conservation companies to develop the product.
[Image: Pika]
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Courtesy of Johanna Varner
[Image: Pika]
Courtesy of Johanna Varner
[Image: Burnt trees near Johanna Varner's control site, after the 2011 Dollar Lake Fire.]
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Courtesy of Johanna Varner
[Image: Burnt trees near Johanna Varner's control site, after the 2011 Dollar Lake Fire.]
Courtesy of Johanna Varner
4. BEATING THE HEAT
Climate change poses a major threat to pikas, adorable little mammals that live mostly in the mountains of the American West. They can overheat in temperatures as low as 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Most make their dens at higher elevations, in rock slides where they can stay cool.
But one population in Oregon's Columbia Gorge thrives near sea level. Ecologist Johanna Varner wanted to find out why. She spent months watching pikas and deploying heat sensors at this low-elevation site. For reference, she did the same at a more typical site, along the slopes of nearby Mount Hood.
Days after her first summer in the field ended, a fire consumed the Mount Hood site, burning trees to the ground and destroying all the food stores of the pikas. The experiment she had planned was ruined — her mountainside "control" site was clearly no longer controlled.
But after some tears and a couple of cold beers, Varner realized the disaster was an opportunity. First, there were the data collected by her heat sensors during the fire. The temperature in the pika dens, she discovered, never rose above 75 degrees F, even when 900-degree fires were raging just feet away. Secondly, her summer spent surveying the pika population formed a rare reference point for the study of a species' recovery after the fire.
[Image: Liquid drops]
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Kurt Hickman/Courtesy of Stanford News Service
[Image: Liquid drops]
Kurt Hickman/Courtesy of Stanford News Service
[Image: Internal toroidal flow (the engine that powers binary droplets) inside a water/PG droplet, visualized using microscopic glowing beads.]
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Kurt Hickman/Courtesy of Stanford News Service
[Image: Internal toroidal flow (the engine that powers binary droplets) inside a water/PG droplet, visualized using microscopic glowing beads.]
Kurt Hickman/Courtesy of Stanford News Service
5. THE DANCE OF THE DROPLETS
As an undergrad, Nate Cira was looking at food coloring under a microscope when he noticed something odd. Two drops of different colors seemed to dance around each other, almost as if they were alive.
When Cira started graduate school at Stanford University, he showed the oddity to his adviser, Manu Prakash. Both men became obsessed with the phenomenon. They spent three years trying to figure out what was causing the strange motion.
It turns out the dynamic dance was the result of two simple physical phenomena: surface tension and evaporation. The vapor given off by one droplet acted like a signal to the other — they were, in a sense, communicating. The principles Prakash, Cira and their collaborator Adrien Benusiglio uncovered could be used to create autonomic liquid machines, such as self-cleaning solar panels.
Science Magazine YouTube
[Image: Mouse]
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iStockphoto
[Image: Mouse]
iStockphoto
6. A CASE OF MISTAKEN GENITALIA
Melissa Brown was at Northwestern University studying mice with multiple sclerosis. Like most MS researchers, Brown exclusively used female mice — the males just don't get sick.
She was embarking on a set of experiments using mice with a genetic mutation that hobbles their immune system. Normal female mice get very sick. Female mice with the mutation seem to do better. Brown wanted to find out why.
But when the results came in, some of them were the opposite of what was expected. Some of the normal mice were healthy. Some of the mice with the mutation were getting sick. A closer inspection of the test subjects revealed why. The mice with the surprising results were male! A graduate student on the project, Margaret Caulfield, was new to the lab and hadn't yet learned to identify the nearly imperceptible genitals of male mouse pups.
The mix-up turned out to be a lucky one. It helped Brown, Caulfield and graduate student Abby Russi pinpoint a special group of cells that protect male mice from MS — innate lymphoid cells. The discovery opens new doors for MS researchers.
[Image: Fibrocytes]
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Courtesy of Texas A&M University
[Image: Fibrocytes]
Courtesy of Texas A&M University
[Image: Microscopic view.]
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Courtesy of Texas A&M University
[Image: Microscopic view.]
Courtesy of Texas A&M University
7. THE SECRET IN THE SERUM
A disease called myelofibrosis causes scar tissue to grow inside bone marrow. It all starts when white blood cells called monocytes enter the marrow and turn into fibrocytes. For years, scientists have searched for a way to stop fibrocyte formation. The only problem? The process was impossible to study. Under normal lab conditions, when monocytes are grown in blood serum, the transformation just doesn't happen. No fibrocytes.
Darrell Pilling and Richard Gomer, biologists at Texas A&M, were recently investigating an entirely different kind of blood cell. They wanted to find out if T cells could survive in a serum-free culture. Unbeknownst to the researchers, their T-cell samples were contaminated with monocytes. And when they looked at their culture under a microscope, they saw ... fibrocytes.
Something in the serum had been keeping the monocytes from transforming.
Pilling and Gomer rapidly changed gears, abandoning their work on T cells and focusing on the monocytes instead. They managed to isolate the serum protein that stopped fibrocyte formation. It is now being tested as a treatment for myelofibrosis.
[Image: A wasp.]
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USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab
[Image: A wasp.]
USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab
[Image: Wasp faces.]
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Courtesy of Elizabeth Tibbetts
[Image: Wasp faces.]
Courtesy of Elizabeth Tibbetts
8. WASPS, FACE TO FACE
As a young graduate student, Liz Tibbetts was studying social hierarchy in wasp colonies. She caught the wasps and painted dots on their backs, so she could tell them apart, and then videotaped their behavior.
Tibbetts failed to mark a few of the wasps and didn't realize her mistake until she was reviewing the video. It was a problem. If she couldn't follow individuals, she couldn't get the data she needed. But, looking a bit closer, she realized she could tell the wasps apart without the paint. The face of each insect had distinct colors and shapes.
Tibbetts wondered if the wasps could also recognize each other. To an experienced researcher this might have seemed outlandish — prevailing wisdom held that social insects couldn't distinguish between individuals. But Tibbetts was new to the field, and so she asked the question anyway.
Her research showed that not only can wasps tell each other apart, but their tiny brains have evolved in a way that allows them to particularly recognize faces. This ability allows for complex social interactions within colonies.
[Image: Streptococcus colony]
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Wikimedia Commons
[Image: Streptococcus colony]
Wikimedia Commons
[Image: George Liu's cleaning station.]
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Courtesy of George Liu
[Image: George Liu's cleaning station.]
Courtesy of George Liu
9. A COLORFUL DEFENSE
Bacteria can be wildly colorful, blooming in bright red and yellow colonies. But researchers studying bacterial disease usually aren't focused on aesthetics.
George Liu, working at the University of California, San Diego, was no exception. He was looking at two varieties of Streptococcus — a normal strain and a mutant strain that couldn't produce a nasty toxin. (The mutant also couldn't produce pigment, but that didn't seem important.)
Liu's experiments were going terribly, full of inconsistent results. Sometimes the bacteria inexplicably died off. Then Liu caught a whiff of bleach in his glassware. An enthusiastic undergraduate had been using bleach to clean the lab's beakers and flasks, and hadn't rinsed them properly. Reviewing his results, Liu noticed that the normal strain of bacteria survived the bleach more often than the mutant strain. But why? Was the toxin somehow protective against bleach?
A second realization came when Liu's mother was nagging him about eating brightly colored vegetables. He remembered that many pigments have antioxidant properties. Maybe it was the pigment, and not the toxin, that was somehow protecting the bacteria.
But why would Streptococcus evolve to produce pigment? It wouldn't be common for the bacteria to encounter cleaning products when they invaded bodies. The final flash of insight came when Liu read the back of the bleach bottle. The fancy chemical name for bleach's active ingredient is hypochlorite — one of the chemicals released by immune cells when they attack bacterial infections.
Further experiments confirmed his hypothesis — Streptococcus was using pigment to neutralize the immune system's hypochlorite. Liu had stumbled upon one of strep's secret weapons.
[Image: A sensor.]
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Courtesy of Calden Carroll
[Image: A sensor.]
Courtesy of Calden Carroll
[Image: Glowing in the dark.]
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Courtesy of Calden Carroll
[Image: Glowing in the dark.]
Courtesy of Calden Carroll
10. A LITERAL CASE OF ACCIDENTAL BRILLIANCE
Calden Carroll thought that his days as a chemistry graduate student at the University of Oregon were nearly done — his thesis was nearly complete. He believed he had created a molecule that would light up in the presence of chloride. Such a molecule would be useful to scientists studying cystic fibrosis, a disease that disrupts the movement of chloride across cell membranes.
But when he tested his magic molecule, it failed spectacularly. Instead of highlighting chloride, it lit up whenever nitrate was present.
A professor pointed out this failed marker could actually be really useful — not for medicine, perhaps, but for agriculture. Carroll patented his discovery and now has a company that builds nitrate sensors to help farmers fertilize their fields more efficiently.
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