Not so bad...........

On Monday, Feb. 9, Dr. Rainey wasn't in class...he "says" he was vacationing...I bet he was home the entire time watching Oprah!!! J/K!!! While he was out Manish took over and walked us step-by-step in doing the dessication/radiation experiment. We had a control,0, that wasn't exposed to any UV, and the experimentals were 3,6, and 16 (we did 16 on Wednesday). On Monday, we dehydrated the organisms, and 7 days from that day we will rehydrate them. We used 4 tubes in which we put ~70 microliters in each, 300 microliters total. The first tube was the control, the second was exposed to 3 kilograde, the third was exposed to 6 kilograde, and the fourth was exposed to 16 kilograde. Manish also gave us a list of the most radiation resistant organisms. They are as follows: Deinococcus radiodurans, Kocruia, Trupera radiovitrix, Rubrobacter, and Methylobacterium. These organisms are able to survive these dessicated and irradiated environments by possessing certain physiologies that prevent them from drying out. It is also assumable that organisms that are radiation resistant are dessication resistant, and vice versa. The way we dessicated and exposed these organisms to UV was by spotting 10 microliters of the organisms onto agar plates and into a 24 well plate. The dessicated plates will remain there for 42 days.

On Wednesday Feb.11, HE RETURNED..hAhA!! In addition to that, we counted our plates from Jan.26, the unirradiated ones. We also continued the experiment we started with Manish by exposing our organisms to the 16 kilograde as I discussed earlier. Next, we transfered our original 26 strains from the cold room on a starch media to see which organisms would be able to digest it. The colonies we chose from the orginal plates were pink in color. There weren't enough starch plates for everyone to get the exact numbers they needed so next class we'll have to plate out those organisms that we weren't able to do. Once we counted all of plates, Dr. Rainey determined that our (-2) plates were the most countable or accurate. Our (-1) plates all had to many colonies to count. If you look at our plates you will notice that as the dillution increaeses (-1 to -6) the number of colonies decreaese and the color of the plates change. The colors of the plates range from yellow to clear to black. Take a look at LRH-1PCA, LRH-2MA, LRH-2hundrethPCA, LRH-4MA, and LRH-5MA in that particular order and you will see the trend that I'm talking about. We also calculateed our CFU's in class and this is done by taking the average from each dilution and mulitiplying it by (10^x), x being the dilution number such as 1,2,3,etc, and then multiplying it by 10. So, you get 66(10^1)(10) which gives 6.6E3.

LRH-1 -1 dilution PCA:

LRH-1 -2 dilution MA:

LRH-1 -2 dilution 1/100 strength PCA:

LRH-1 -4 dilution MA:

LRH-1 -4 dilution MA: