Fourth Week

I got the results for my inoculations and saw how the unknown was grown. I included some of the pictures dawn below. But my lab work for this week was Gram Stain. In this method I learned how to identify the type of bacteria, but I still don’t know what exactly my bacteria is. First time when I Gram stained, it all got washed off because I hadn’t heat-fixed the bacteria smear on the slide. Second time, I successfully finished the experiment and got to look at my unknown by microscope. It was purple, so I figured out that it’s Gram Positive, and from the circular shape that it had I found out it was Cocci. Then I could cell morphology by looking at my bacteria’s colony from my isolated bacteria and could see that it was circular, raised, entire type of colony. I also included a picture of my bacteria. Now, I’m looking forward to my next week experiment which is Gram + Catalase Test.

                                                                     Unknown Lab

This week was basically my first lab experiment. I learned about five I’s: inoculation, incubation, isolation, inspection and identification. I inoculated a sample from TSB (soy broth) to TSA slant (soy agar) using loop and dragging it in “S” pattern back and forth across the surface of the agar. The loop should be sterilized by heating it in Bacti-Cinerator for 5 seconds before each use. I also learned how to streak a plate in two different ways. First, I used the lawn technique. It’s basically spreading your bacteria on a petri-dish in an “S” pattern. I spread my unknown on the first region.Then turned my plate 60 ͦ and kept spreading it and did another 60 ͦ turn to make sure it’s spread really well. Next technique was isolation technique in which I divided a plate to three separate regions. Then, I spread the sample or my unknown on the first region. To go to second region, I got two lines from first region and spread those on my second region. I repeated it for third region, but getting my two lines from second region this time. I incubated them all and waiting for them to grow, so I can inspect and eventually identify my unknown. Bellow is a picture of my plate, slant tube and unknown.

Hi everyone,
I just started my lab work last week. Like any new scholar, they started me with safety videos, and I got to meet some of you and hear about your individual experiences which were really helpful. I got to watch Celena making and running gels with 2% Agarose. But because of her PCRs being so dried out the experiment wasn't successful enough. Next week they will have me going through the routines of the lab like cultivating bacteria. I'm looking forward to start my second week, and I'm sure it will be amazing working with you all. Below is the picture that I took from the experiment that Celena did while teaching me about it. and I think we are going to work together for this semester on the same project.