Whew! That was fun. The first week of being a lowly high school kid who doesn't know what they're doing is over. No bubbles yet, but we're getting there. We started out with the basic stuff, lab procedures, the baseline necessities of the project. Before anything else, however, I had to make broth to grow the bacteria. First was LB broth, or Lysogeny broth, which contains a rich cocktail of proteins, yeast extract, and salt, among other things. I made quite a bit of it (1L) and 1L of this MH broth, which is similar, but has slightly different components. But both of them still smell like chicken stock. Next, I made agar, this gelatin-like substance derived from seaweed, to culture the bacteria in petri dishes. After streaking the plates with bacteria, they were incubated overnight. Today, I came into the lab, and
Voila! There were little white dots all over my petri dishes. My last visit for this week, I prepared glycerol stocks of my bacteria,
E.coli and
Staph. epidermitis* (the lactobacillus hasn't come in yet).
Now here comes the part where I talk about the obstacles I have faced. So far my greatest obstacle has been not being entirely sure what to do. Although I have great instruction from Dr.Koppisch and can ask one of the intimidating grad students how to do basic procedures, sometimes I just had trouble. Like following a grad student's incorrect advice to autoclave fresh broth or thinking that a pipette measured in microliters (uL) instead of mL. Oh well, one must make mistakes. Hopefully I will know my way around the lab better and know what to do next week. But enough with the talking! Here are some pictures.
Signing out,
Mackenzie
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| Where it all starts: broth mix. |
*Change of plans: due to the virulence of
Staph. aureus, I am instead working with a similar bacterium,
Staph. epidermitis. Even though it is not found in the stomach or intestine, it is found in the mouth (still part of the GI tract) and is used as a substitute for aureus. So, we should be all good.
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| Finished agar plates |
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| Finished broth! |
And, of course, here are the bacteria.
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| Staph. epidermitis |
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| E.coli |
Great progress! Thanks for the pictures, they really help us see what you are up to.
ReplyDeleteHi Mackenzie. I bet it is quite the learning curve! Did you ever read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks? I think you'd enjoy it with all this broth and culture talk...
ReplyDeleteCool stuff! What's your control for this, and will you be doing any final statistical analysis?
ReplyDeleteI understand your pain (not knowing exactly what to do). However, it looks like you actually do haha. It will be interesting to see what you find!
ReplyDeleteAt least you didn't break anything in the lab (AP Chemistry 2014). I like that the pictures are little Polaroids. Are you afraid of contaminating anything? What steps have you taken to avoid either contamination to the petri dishes or from them?
ReplyDeleteThanks! Ms.Hartman- I have never read the book, but I have heard of it. I might try reading it sometime. Liam- my control for this will be strains of bacteria that do not come into contact with the dishwashing detergents. I do not yet know if I will be doing any statistical analysis. Rachel- I am of course afraid of contaminating things, but I recently went to this biosafety meeting, so hopefully I'll be more aware of that kind of thing. In order to avoid contamination, well, I wash my hands A LOT. I wear gloves, a lab coat, all that gear to avoid contaminating any important parts of anything. And every time I work with the actual bacteria, I do it under a fume hood.
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