Lazy question: Anyone know where to purchase seeds for research? Tobacco and mustard seed are my only ideas ... - Steve Koch

extend expt to tobacco varietals -- http://www.thetobaccoseed.com/Tobacco...; herbs and vegetables -- http://www.stokeseeds.com/home...; another idea would be to work with seed researchers (e.g. http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~seedbi..., UNM's own botany dept) to pick the best candidates and sources. My google-fu is not the strongest but those links could get you started. - Bill Hooker

What I forgot to say: this is a really interesting line of thought and an elegant experimental way to start following it -- I really hope you will do this! When you switch the units (17mM!!) it becomes much more intuitive to look for biological effects and adaptations. - Bill Hooker

Thanks, Bill! Just to get a foothold, I ordered some Virginia seeds from that first link. I'll see if they sprout in water like they did back in 1933. I'm glad you liked the story, too! Maybe I will take the luxury this weekend of writing up an experimental plan, I've resisted so far, but it sounds like fun :) - Steve Koch

As an alternative to the Google search, did you try to feed http://www.biosemantics.org/jane... with some relevant key words? I just pasted in a part of your blog post and saw things like http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites... and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites... and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites... and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites... . - Daniel Mietchen

Thanks, Daniel, I hadn't thought of using JANE. Trying it out now.. - Steve Koch

Found an article that looks interesting: http://www.springerlink.com/content... "Effect of deuterium-depleted water on reproduction of rainbow trout" From the abstract / intro (all I've read so far), they say deuterium-depleted water increases survival of embryonic roe (I don't know if I'm using the terminology correctly). They also cite prior literature saying that prior work saying that batches of fish subjected to 30 ppm (instead of normal 140 ppm) deuterium showed pronounced degeneration. I'm skeptical of that, but it's what they say. They also cite the work with cell lines that I mentioned in blog and which I'm also skeptical of. - Steve Koch

It turns out in his 1934 Science paper (which as of July 2011 is not indexed correctly on Web of Science), Gilbert Lewis specifically calls for experiments with deuterium-depleted water to see whether life forms have adapted a need for D in normal cellular operations. "It is not inconceivable that heavy hydrogen, which exists in small amounts in all natural water, may actually be essential to some plants or animals. A supply of water almost completely freed from the heavy isotope is now being prepared for the purpose of conducting such studies." [1] Despite ending his Science paper with these sentences, I could not find any follow-up to these studies! Neither by Lewis and colleagues, nor by any other groups in the following 75 years--except for the half dozen publications on Pub Med studying deuterium-depleted water in whole mammals or mammalian tissue culture. [1] Lewis, G. N. (1934). THE BIOLOGY OF HEAVY WATER. Science (New York, N.Y.), 79(2042), 151-153. doi: 10.1126/science.79.2042.151. - Steve Koch