Making vinegar. Photo Credit: Sharon Mollerus (clairity/Flickr)
Imagine yourself in elementary school parading through the auditorium during your school’s coveted science fair. You round the corner, nearly knocking over the perfectly aligned row of tri-fold poster boards, when you happen upon the fair’s pièce de résistance. Suddenly, science has never been so cool. It’s an erupting volcano! You’re ooh-ing and ahh-ing as you watch the “molten hot lava” spew out from the angry papier-mâché mountain. You inquire about the sour smell in the air and are told by your classmate that this tabletop magic was nothing more than a perfectly planned mixture of vinegar and baking soda.
Vinegar is an aqueous solution that contains acetic acid and water. Historically, vinegars were often produced by exposing wine to contamination by harmless, airborne bacteria known as Acetobacter. Drosophila melanogaster, a geneticist’s model friend, commonly known as the fruit fly, is regarded as a potent vector for the propagation of the bacterium. This particular strain of bacteria facilitates the conversion of ethanol, through aerobic oxidation, into the major component of vinegar: acetic acid. Water is often added to commercially available vinegars to make the substance more suitable for household handling and consumption [1].
