Oooops :) Did Rachael get married? She does not say she didn't - Seems as good an excuse for a late BLOG as others have given....

Oooops :)
Last week was a crazy week for me so I apologize for not turning this in on Friday. After class Wednesday I left for Virginia and it was not until I got back late Sunday that I realized I had not written a blog! But Virginia was amazing I got to see my parents and brother and sister which was nice since I usually only see them at Christmas and a week or two during the summer and the wedding was beautiful!! On Monday in class we observed our plates that had been exposed to 0, 3, 6, and 16 kGy radiation. In the pictures below you can see the growth for strains 8, 10, 11, 12, and 16 at each dose of radiation exposure. There was good growth for 16, 12, and 11 after being exposed to 3 kGy while strains 8 and 10 had much less growth and were a lighter color than the control. After 6 kGy exposure strain 16 had a much smaller zone of growth than on 0 and 3 kGy and strain 11 barely grew at all. Strains 8, 10, and 12 did not survive at this exposure and none of the strains grew at 16 kGy. We will test exposure at 9 kGy to see if strains 16 and 11 can survive higher than 6 kGy.

(insert pictures of 8-10-11-12-16 at all radiations)

We also observed our starch plates and tested for the production of amylase by flooding the plate with iodine and looking for a zone of hydrolysis. We graded our plates positive, weakly positive, or negative. 13 strains had a positive reaction, 2 were weakly positive showing a slight zone of hydrolysis, and 11 strains were negative. Below you can see pictures of plates that were positive, weakly positive, and negative. Strain 11 was positive. Strain 6 was weakly positive. Strain 20 was negative.

(insert pictures of strains 11, 6, and 20)

Finally on Monday we observed our twenty unirradiated and irradiated soil samples that had been chosen to be plated in hopes they were one of the desired genres. Most of our colonies were varying shades of pink. Four strains: N97-1, N97-12, N97-13, and N97-18 had little or no growth. For the rest of the N97 strains we preformed DNA extraction using the MOBIO kit. This gave us practice using this kit again and helped prepare us for the midterm.
Wednesday was midterm day!! After the midterm Eugene so nicely let me leave to go to the airport while he spotted our pH plates. Overall it was a busy week as far a collecting data and studying for the midterm.