Serendipity

What began as a bioweapon engineering project mutated into a basic investigation of the snail's conditional urge to make babies. A method was found - actually it was already known, but it was confirmed and explored - to strongly suppress that urge, while still keeping the animals happy and well-fed. We still don't know why it works, but it works pretty well (~70-80%) and it's much more affordable and eco-friendly than the original bioweapon candidate. The next practical challenge for schisto snail control must be to engineer a very efficient, very affordable baited TRAP that can be deployed by the millions, loaded with reproduction-inhibiting snail chow. This is the penultimate lab note from this project. The ultimate lab note, God willing, is going to announce the acceptance of a manuscript for publication in some humble scientific journal.