Blog Post Week 4

Good afternoon everyone! So this week we were all working on our abstract and was the focus researching and getting background information that we need for this semester. Thank you to all the mentors and peers for their support as well. Honestly, it is hard to think about how you should word your abstract and trying to find what is the best, most vital information that should be included in the abstract.  However, we got it done and I’m anxious to see how well we do. On the other hand, I have also been working with David’s team and today I learned how to do water filtration so thanks to the team for showing me. I got to work under the hood and get a feel for what I have to do and will be doing in the future.

This is the hood that one must work in when doing water filtration.

Blog Post week 3

1. Oxidase Test[no color change(-)]

4. Found Unknown (E-Coli!)

Hey everyone! Good news! As you know I had made a mistake last week and had to regrow my cultures. Well they grew! This time I was able to determine under the microscope that my bacteria was a gram negative-bacilli. Using a flow chart, it guided me to the different tests I were to perform to find my unknown. The following three pictures show the results of my tests and the last one is my own flow chart that I made as I performed each test. The first test after identifying it was a gram-negative bacilli, was called the oxidase test. By doing this we determined that it was negative because by placing a drop on a colony, it would either have changed color if it was positive. Next were the glucose fermentation test and the SIM test that I had to leave incubated over a 24hr period. These are the results I found today. For the GFT, I found that it was acid because of the yellow color, and it was a gas by the bubble in the Durham tube. Since we had a positive acid, I was then directed to look at the SIM testing results which was a stab of my bacteria into the tube and found that there was a negative in the reduction of sulfide which if it was positive it would have turned a dark color. I also found that the motility was positive because as you can see, it looks as if it came away from the straight stab that I had made, therefore there was movement, in which it made the motility positive. By performing these tests I have found my unknown!Which is circled on the 4th picture.

2. GFT Yellow color and bubble(+ Acid)

3. SIM (-)Reduction of Sulfur and (+) Motility