S-STEM Scholar Belinda Chesser's Blog

9/24 I was out sick last week, so I hadn't been able to sit down and properly inspect the plates until today. After I took pictures of each group, I assigned each plate within the group a number (1 through 4), and noted the following: Number of the plate Who plated it The relative size of the colonies Which quadrants the colonies had spread into (in a 4-way streak) Colony color Any points of contamination Once I had that information, I discarded the plates that had contamination and the ones that had no growth whatsoever, then decided which plates would be best used for inoculation to the next round of flasks, and which would be suitable for viewing under the dissecting microscope. Any extras were also kept, just in case.  Plates were taped together in their respective groups ("for inoculation", "for microscope", "extras") and placed in the fridge. 9/26 Colonies on each media were viewed under the dissecting mic...

9/16 John was able to take the plates out of the incubator and sent me images.

9/10 I made 250 mL of agar media of the following in order to make plates: TSYE TSB/A LB R2A I inoculated the previously prepared flasks with D. aquaticus  PB314 that had been plated by John Hart on 8/30/19, then placed the flasks in the shaker incubator @ 28 degrees C for ~48 hours.  Inoculated flasks ready for the incubator. 9/12 I reheated the previously made agar media in order to pour into plates. Solid agar media being heated on hot plates and melted to be poured into plates. The inoculated flasks were taken out of the incubator and visually inspected for growth. Each one showed various levels of growth, some showed the formation of a line of biofilm, all in a range of colors. 9/14 John and I inoculated from the previous flasks to the previously poured plates, four of each type of media, each of us doing two. Since two types of our broth media had become contaminated, TSYE & LB, John made 150 mL of TSYE broth,...

9/6 In preparation for the media experiment, I made the following broth media (that I didn't already have): 250 mL TGY 250 mL TSB 250 mL TSYE 9/7 We had our first ASU West Peer Mentor Meeting with Jasmine, a TRAIN Scholar and Mentor from ASU West. She was able to tell us a bit about what to expect when we transfer to the New College and what kind of resources will be available to us. It was very informative, and I appreciated that Jasmine was able to come and talk to us. John Hart and I aliquoted 50 mL of broth of each type of media into 125 mL flasks for inoculation. But first, to the autoclave! Ready for the autoclave to sterilize.

8/27 I began planning out my media experiment and what I would need. I want to look at how different growth mediums affect the growth of a bacteria, from the morphology of the bacteria's morphology, to the individual bacteria's morphology, to the protein expression. So I will be growing Deinococcus aquaticus  on six different media and studying the differences and similarities. I also began reviewing a paper given to me by Chad, "Quantitative Characterization of the Growth of Deinococcus geothermalis  DSM-11302: Effect of Inoculum Size, Growth Medium and Culture Conditions". It may provide some insight into the question of media effect, and could be interesting to either recreate the experiment with D. geothermalis  or tweak it for D. aquaticus . 8/30 Because Trevon and I are the veterans of our TRAIN group, we assisted with teaching the new TRAIN students how to do gram staining, as that is a technique that is used extensively in the lab. The image below ...