Week 12:
I came back this week feeling refreshed from thanksgiving
break! I continued to identify my bacteria. To identify the bacteria, I had to
transfer over a colony of bacteria from TSA plate with a Loop onto a clean
glass slide. After transferring over bacteria onto the glass slide, I proceeded
with gram staining. If I am being honest, I think it is the worst gram stain I’ve
ever seen haha. Anyhow, after doing the gram staining, I took the best slide
and looked at it under the microscope. I set my lens at 4x objective, then a
10x and 100x to take a closer look at the organism. The cell color came out to
be pink! I concluded that the bacteria I looked at was bacilli gram stain
negative. I did 3 tests on the gram-negative bacilli. I inoculated with a
Loop/Needle the bacteria into Glucose, Gel, and SIM tubes and stored it in the
incubator overnight. Today I looked at the results of the tubes and the Glucose
Test came back Gas Positive. The Gel came back Positive, turning from a solid
to a liquid. The SIM test were not so reliable as the inoculation was bad. I went
based off the color change near the start of bacteria growth which was not
black. I Identified my unknown bacteria as Serratia Marcescens!
-
Francisco
