Lab goes on no matter what school says.....

It has been a while since my last entry and this is what has happened. School said that there was suppose to be a holiday but it did not really interest me so instead I returned to my post in the lab. On Monday of the holiday the last of the large quantity of media needed for some future experiments was made and poured this took about all day. Tuesday I did actually take the day off the main reason being the building was locked and I could not get into it. Wednesday was the busiest of all. Rachel came in and helped label and plate a Cellulose and Xylan degredation test. Dr. Raney helped also once everything was set up. Ph was also suppose to be done but we ran out of time.
The following Monday Lab resumed. On this day the plates that had been inoculated with spots from our radiation test were graded there seemed to be know survivors of the 16kGy dose. There were no real surprises the majority of the organisms survived to some extent 6kGy. The starch hydrolysis test was also graded on Monday. Our results were 50/50. Also for the remainder of class DNA isolation took place. We isolated DNA from the 20 colonies that we took from our unirradiated and irradiated serial dilution plates that were done previously. This DNA will be used to sequence these organisms and see if any are related to our target Genera of Geodermatophilus, Modestobacter, or Blastococcus.
Wednesday was the big Midterm I thought the test was fair and there were probably things I missed as I think back on it I even forgot to go back and change one of my answeres that I needed to so no 100% for me. Anyway after the test we plated using the spot technique our Ph test. This will test the ranges of growth of our isolates the range they were plated on was ph4-ph10 at 1 ph increments. So for the past two weeks a load of data has been obtained that will amount to maybe three lines in a table in the final paper.

The pictures I have chosen are the ones from the irradiation test. As you can see as the amount of radiation absorbed by the organisms increases the amount of growth in the inoculated spot decreases. This shows that a radiation dose above 3kGy selects against isolates 8, 10, and 12 allowing isolates 11, and 16 to grow where as a dose above 6kGy selects against all the isolates. Similar cases were shown on all series of plates :

Strains exposed to 0kGy:

Strains exposed to 3kGy:

Strains exposed to 6kGy:
Strains exposed to 16kGy:

... OFFICIALLY POOPED!!

This week started of pretty hectic. On Monday, we performed DNA extraction, rated our radiation plates, and test our starch plates for amylase hydrolysis. I got a bit aggravated because we seemed to be moving slower than molasses. However, I am grateful now because I have a better understanding of DNA extraction. Anyways so we rated our radiation plates, and for some reason we do not have as many contaminants as we usually! That’s a plus! From the observations we noticed that we have a variety of different strains of species. The colors ranged from white-beige-pink-black! Most growth occurred at 0 kGy, however, there was no growth present at 16 kGy. For this reason I believe that some of the strains may be Blastococcus (those that are semi-resistant) because some were able to withstand 6 kGy of radiation. The trend was as expected, as the radiation increased, survival decreased! Next, we checked our starch plates for amylase hydrolysis. This was done by adding iodine to our starch plates. Those strains which were able to hydrolyze amylase produced a “zone of hydrolysis” around the colonies formed. This is a clearing around the bacteria. Most test positive, which leads me to believe that we are dealing with a lot of M. multiseptatus, G. obscurus, and B. jejeunsis! Athough, everything went smoothly, we were not able to perform the test on 3 of our strains, because a certain someone from our group did not parafilm the plates so the bacteria dried out! Finally, we performed DNA extraction which took us FOREVER! We chose 12 strains to work with from our soil sample (LRH-03-1). Once again we found colonies which were orange, peach, cream, white, pink, and black. This symbolizes the presence of a lot of different organisms! Although we left well after time, this was a pretty productive lab I must say! So, I went home to re-live lab all over again! I CONTINUED to study for the midterm; however, I did not feel prepared. Low and behold Cristi sent a study guide, which was extremely helpful. I now vow to put forth much more effort into this class!! So, the day of the test came, and everyone was nervous. I think that the test was challenging but nothing unmanageable if you studied like you should! Anyways, we went on to perform pH test, which included streaking our strains on pH plates of 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10. There was 6 strains assigned to each plate!

Below are the plates from Monday, which shows that as radiation increased growth size decreased.

Also, the starch plates represent strain 30 and 45. 30 shows amylase hydrolysis, whereas 45 did not hydrolyze amylase!

Strain 45:

Strain 30:

Never give up on the last man past the flag.....

For my Mardi Gras Break I spent my week mostly studying for the MCAT and catching up on reading in my other classes. We have a bunch of information to cover for this midterm and my Virology midterm will be quite difficult as well. This was actually my first year at LSU that I didn't go to New Orleans. I usually head there for Friday and Saturday because there is too many people Sunday- Tuesday, but I was lacking in the funds to attend the M.G. bash.

So I decided to head home for the break to visit my family and to get a part replaced on my car, it’s been broke since I bought the thing new. I bring my car in at 730AM on Monday and they said it’s a simple problem and it will be done Wednesday morning. Well Fat Tuesday rolls by and I call the dealership up at 9AM Wednesday morning and "What-A-Surprise", my car isn't ready. So stayed in Lake Charles to the evening and I get a call around 530 in the afternoon saying that my car won't be ready till Friday.

Since my GTO wasn't ready, I took the LS back. Well on Friday I get a call at 4PM, it was the dealership saying my car was fixed and ready to be picked up. I was pretty excited to have my car back. I made plans for my parents to meet me in Lafayette to pick up my car on Saturday. Well I make it to Lobdell when I get a call from my mom. She tells me, "The part of your car is still broke." I'M FURIOUS!!!! Not only does it take a week just to change a plastic piece, but they also FAILED at fixing the problem.

With that being said, Mardi Gras Break has been a little aggravating, but overall I had a good break…

I miss my car:

My Boring Week

This past week was pleasantly uneventful and I was happy to have some time off from school. I went to New Orleans during Saturday to visit some family, but I came back to Baton Rouge that night. The rest of the break was spend studying, picking my brother up from school, and taking my grandmother to the doctor. I won't bore you with any details.

Happy Mardi Gras!!

The extended weekend was very much enjoyed! I was in New Orleans from Saturday-Tuesday and it was a LOT of fun! I stayed at this hotel called the St. Vincent house on Magazine with some friends. It used to be a orphanage back in the day and its really old and creepy! I went to a bunch of parades and got some good beads as well as sunburn but the best part was the NOLA food! Since I was back Tuesday I went into the lab on Wednesday. Eugene, Dr. Rainey, and I streaked all 78 strains onto plates to be incubated at 10C since we had some difficulties with the incubator last time. We also streaked strains that there was no temperature data available due to contamination problems on media to be incubated at 25C, 30C, 37C, and 42C. Strains that were observed to grow on 42C were plated for incubation at 45C and 50C to see if they are able to grow at an even higher temperatures. We also streaked all 78 strains onto three different types of media containing either xylan, granular cellulose or AC ( I cant remember what it stands for and I think those are the names for X and CG). It was a lot of labeling and even more parafilming which unfortunately for them was done after I left for work! Hope everyone had a good weekend, see yall Monday!

Here is my blog!!

This mardi gras break has brought me some much needed relief. Not only was it nice sleeping late for a couple of days, what brought me the most relief is finding some relief for my chronic headaches. I went to the doctor and found out I have some pretty nasty polyps in my nose and behind my eyes! Ewww! Hopefully there no surgery in my future, but I’ll go back in a couple of weeks to find out.
I’m working on a study guide that I will be glad to share with everyone whenever I get done. I am busy reading all of the papers on airset and making some descriptions of the three genera. So much to do!!
Thanks again Larry for the boil 4125 stuff. I did good on my test! See you Monday!

Life (and BIOL 4126) went on as usual........but not for everyone...

Yes it was Mardi Gras this past week and here in LA the students get M, T and W off school and there are no classes. This situation is yet another example of the lack of separation of church and state (how many religious holidays does the state of LA close down for?). But the three days of Carnival are not all fun and beads and by the end of Fat Tuesday 12 people had received gun shoot wounds in the Crescent City and at least two of these incidents ended in the loss of life. As Chris Rose wrote in the Living Section (of TP) no one really cares. It is just what we expect or maybe it’s just what we accept! There are no protests outside city hall, no one is calling for the police chief to hang up his white shirt or the mayor to hand in his credit card. Most people probably didn’t even notice or hear about it and as they woke up Wednesday morning searching for the hangover cure the last thing on their mind was the dead and the maimed (or BIOL 4126).

For some Wednesday was just another day, things to do, places to go and plates to streak! In fact Monday was the day the pH 4.0 plates got prepared. Then on Wednesday the 10C plates got restreaked and incubated in an incubator that works and stays at 10C (a better quality one this time unlike the last piece of junk we tried last time). Restreaks were also prepared for the other temperature tests that had been problematic first time round. For the strains that showed growth in the first experiment it was a case of upwards and onwards as they got restreaked and incubated at 45 and 50C. In the papers that we are all reading in our attempt to ace the midterm many of the strains had been tested for the degradation of various polymers. So in an attempt to test our strains for these phenotypes plates containing Avicel (crystalline cellulose) , granular cellulose and xylan had all 78 strains streaked on them.

During this streaking of plates by it was noticed that some of our fellow class mates have failed to master the steak plate technique. Many of the 25C stock plates had little or no growth on them due to bad streak plate technique. Dr. Rainey said he will have to give a demo next class which is sad considering many in class are graduating seniors or microbiology majors.

So on Wednesday in the RaineyLab there were no evident or confessed hangovers (oh dear – now who is not separating church and state)and for us life and BIOL 4126 went on as usual. But maybe we should take a minute to think of those whose lives got changed forever and did not go on as usual or worse still those who’s lives had ended the previous day when Tuesday was not so ‘Phat’ after all……