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This week went by so fast! Biochemistry took over my life as well as copying and pasting EzTaxon and BLAST results! On Monday we ran our our selected strains from our radiated and non irradiated soil samples on agrose gel. We will used these for PCR Wednesday. We also spotted a control and 9 kGy radiated sample of each of our 26 strains. Strains that grew after 6 kGy and not 16 kGy will show whether they can grow at levels above 6 kGy. We also began putting our known 16S RNA sequences into EzTaxon and BLAST to see which organisms they are most similar to. Our group had the most hits of Blastococcus sp. Wednesday we began lab by streaking new stock plates. I noticed that colonies that were pink/peach were much easier to get off of the agar and streak than the cream/white colonies which seemed to be growing stiffly on top of and into the agar. We grew an extra plate of possible Modestobacter and Blastococcus aggregates (strains AT03-34-2 and AT04-158-8) to be used for microscopy on Monday. There we will view cellular morphology and hopefully mobility accessories of these organisms. We also preformed PCR for our soil DNA as well as our 6 strains chosen from our strain collection. We used a master mix and learned as a class to be careful with our distribution of master mix so that there will be enough for a negative control. I am looking forward to viewing our strains under the microscopes Monday and getting to see what they look like on something other than their normal agar!! Hope Mexico is treating you nicely Rainey!