In honor of the dozens of transsexuals affected by hyperprolactinemia, I decided to cover three milk related microbial things today.

Pt. 1 - Moonmilk (Maybe Microbes)

Limestone caves sometimes have these creamy, white formations in them. People called the stuff moonmilk. Limestone caves are just really interesting, very-slow paced chemical reactions. Moonmilk conglomerates are precipitate of some of those reactions. It’s basically a creamy aggregate of assorted carbonate crystals, and according to folklore the moon lactated it there.

There is a persistent belief that moonmilk is the creation of bacteria. I think they are probably involved because there is love in my heart and magic is real. A fair few studies have isolated bacteria from moonmilk but it’s harder to say they are what put it there. But I believe in my heart that bacteria too can lactate, and as such we need to start treating them with the same reverence as a mammal or perhaps even a hyperprolactinemic transsexual maiden.

Pt. 2 - Acid of Milk (Made by Microbes)

Lactic acid is so-named because it was first classified after being found in sour milk. Now we all need to deal with the fact our bodies produce large quantities of something literally called “milk acid.” In our bodies, lactic acid production is handled “in-house” via muscle cells eating pyruvate.

Bacteria do much the same, and in fact there is a whole group of Lactic Acid Bacteria who synthesize the stuff. They’re a pretty big component of many types of fermentation, and the diversity of acid helps to confer a nice flavor. Many industrial fermentation methods forgo lactic acid bacteria and other helpful fermenters in favor of a more consistent taste, but a few don’t, including lambic because lambic is the best beer.

Lactic acid bacteria are also a major contributor to cavities as a result of the lactic acid they produce. I normally dislike discussing pathogens or bacteria that negatively impact health because that’s all anyone talks about, but its sort of funny that they’re just living their lives in there blissfully unaware of macroscopic biomechanics as you feed the little sweetings delicious pyruvate sources. The bacteria yearn for carbohydrates.

Pt. 3 - Milky Seas (Many Microbes)

On the 25th of January, 1995, off the coast of Somalia, the sea surrounding the S.S. Lima began to glow. It was a pale white that seemed to stretch across the entirety of the horizon like an impossible snowfield. Every now and again, for thousands of years, sailors would report phenomena like this.

Ten years earlier in 1985, the ship Ganesha encountered a similar phenomena in the western Arabian sea, and managed to opportunistically collect data from it, almost the only in situ research performed on the phenomena. Some zooplankton like dinoflagellates (which create that blue-glow in waves or disturbed water) were present, but the source of it seemed to be the bacterium vibrio harveyi.

It remains incredibly cryptic, but the existence and scale of it was made incredibly clear by trawling through satellite data. In 2005, Steve Miller of Monterey CA’s Naval Research Laboratory, found the phenomenon as it was described - and a bit bigger, if anything. For 3 days an uninterrupted patch of bacterial glow was visible for space. The patch was a staggering 15,400 km2.

The causes are still unclear, but the phenomena is most common in the Indian Ocean and Arabian sea. It seems it may have to do with chlorophyll content in the water nearby. Of note is that the process of bioluminescing is extremely metabolically taxing, making the as-yet unknown cause even more fascinating. It probably has something to do, alongside the chlorophyll blooms, with the phenomena of quorum sensing, where bacteria can respond to and modulate their behavior at scale in response to high levels of a particular chemical in the environment, typically secreted by their fellow bacteria.

We are not the only creatures to create light visible from space.

Have a happy microbe monday! Remember that there is life upon life and there are many tiny things counting on you.