привет! Hi!

For the remaining three weeks of my project, we decided to test all three types of bacteria against a solution of 1 mg/mL detergent. At the beginning of my project, we looked at the effects of  10 mg/mL solutions on e.coli and saw a HUGE change (like a 2-log reduction), and since we have results from the tiny, but more realistic concentration of 0.1 mg/mL, we thought it would be a good idea to try the happy medium. So far, the results of this test show almost what I expected: that it affected the bacteria a little more than the 0.1 concentration, but a little less than the 10 concentration. Although the graph is a bit small, it basically reads that there was about a 0.7-log reduction in the bacteria. Below are my plates-- I decided to add an artistic photo for your enjoyment.

1 mg/mL detergent plates

Ooh! An artistic picture of e.coli in Dawn

 I honestly expected a bigger reduction, for example, 1-log, but there may have been more error in this run due to hot autoclaved water. To dilute the bacteria for the biofilm tests, you have to fill your test tubes with autoclaved water to ensure nothing else is growing in them. However, yesterday we ran out of water, and I had to autoclave more. When things come out of the autoclave, they're usually steaming hot, so I waited about 30 minutes for the water to cool down. This may have not been enough and possibly killed some of the bacteria in the test tubes. Due to lack of time, however, I believe this data will suffice and I will talk about it in my presentation if you attend. As you can see below, it doesn't look like there's much of a difference between my controls and challenge tests.




The detergent tests once again showed significant growth of the bacteria floating around in solutions of Dawn and Cascade. So all in all, it's pretty nice to know that the detergents won't actually kill our gut biofilms, but rather move them around. Doing these biofilm tests has naturally brought on other questions one could research: what would happen if you tested toothpaste? What if you used different plates? I will no have time to answer these questions experimentally, but since toothpaste is probably ingested as much as, if not more than, common dish detergents, it leaves an open door for someone after me to test. In terms of new things I've learned, well, I learned the molecular structure of choline yesterday (thanks to my lab mate Kahla) and the importance of using cooler autoclaved water to do biofilm tests. It looks pretty cool.

Choline! woot woot!

Yay! Chemistry! But for now, I am off, so,

Всего наилучшего! All the best!

Mackenzie