Better late than never..........

This week began with the plating and inoculation of our twenty-six test strains on the media that the organism grew best on. The next step in the process was to plate serial dilutions of irradiated LRH-03-1 sample. The motivation behind the radiation is the fact that members of Geodermatophilaceae show resistance to radiation. So hopefully a majority of the organisms that we are not looking for will be killed off. As a result, serial dilutions were only made till 10-3 instead of going out to 10-6. The next lab day began with plating our twenty-six strains on to new optimal media. We were able to use 2 strains per plate because we are looking for qualitative data. The strains were plated so that we could incubate it varying temperatures (10, 25, 30, 37, 40, and 42 Celsius) to see which it grows best at. The next task was plating the twenty-six strains on media of varying NaCl concentration (1, 3, 6, and 9 percent), two strains per plate technique was used again. The class concluded with group discussion of possible tests to characterize Geodermatophilaceae.

Biology Joke of the Week:
Did you hear about the famous microbiologist who traveled in thirty different countries and learned to speak six languages? He was a man of many cultures.