Ultra microbalance

Larvae were extracted from the medium 4 days after egg-laying following Bochdanovits and de Jong (2003 (link)) and weighed in groups of three (n = 15) to obtain both wet (fresh) and dry weights (dried for 24 h at 65°C).
Adult flies were weighed in unisex groupings of three individuals, 1 day after eclosion. Weight was measured for 48 flies per treatment (12 groups of three flies each). After wet weight was obtained, flies were dried in an oven at 65°C for 72 h and then re-weighed to obtain dry weight.
After development on the different larval foods, adult females were maintained as virgins on control food for 2 days at a density of 10 females per vial. They were then placed on agar plates with yeast to stimulate egg-laying for 3 h. Eggs were collected and weighed on a Sartorius ultra-microbalance in groups of 20 per larval food (n = 8) to obtain wet weight, then dried for 24 h at 65°C in an oven, and re-weighed to obtain dry weight.
All weights were obtained with a Sartorius ultra-microbalance accurate to the nearest 0.1 μg.

Textile squares of 1 cm × 1 cm were cut from acrylic–curli composites and weighed on an ultramicrobalance (Sartorius). Each well in a 12-well plate was filled with one of the following solutions-5% Sodium dodecyl sulphate (w/v), 8 M GdmCl, DI water, 70% ethanol (v/v), buffer of pH 4, buffer of pH 10, artificial sweat and varying concentrations of sodium chloride (1 M–0.001 M).
Solutions of pH 4 and pH 10 were prepared by adjusting the pH of DI water with 1 M HCl and 1 M NaOH, respectively. The composites were incubated with these environmental agents for 10 days with constant agitation. The samples were incubated with DI water to wash off the residual salts and air dried. The weights of the composites after chemical/solvent treatment were taken and loss of curli fiber from the textile substrates were measured using Eq. (1). $$Lossofcurlifibers\left(\%\right)=\frac{W_i-W_{f\left(g\right)}}{W_i\left(g\right)}\times 100$$ where W_i is the initial weight of acrylic–curli composites and W_f is the final weight of acrylic–curli composites.

The mass of dry DMPS lipid powder was determined using an ultra-micro balance (Sartorius), and dissolved in 20 mM sodium phosphate buffer pH 6.5 to a concentration of 2 mM. This was dissolved by shaking, in a 2 ml Eppendorf tube, on a Thermomixer compact (Eppendorf), at 45 °C, 1400 r.p.m. for 3 h. The solution was then freeze-thawed five times using dry ice and the Thermomixer compact (Eppendorf) at 45 °C and 500 r.p.m. The preparation of the vesicles was carried out by sonication, using a Soniprep 150 plus sonicator, set to an amplitude of 10.0, for five cycles of 30 s on and 30 s off.