Spring 2024: Week 8 - March 18, 2024 - March 22, 2024

 Introduction

With upcoming science conferences, we were given the opportunity to start another short project in hopes of getting it done in time to submit an abstract for the Arizona Nevada Academy of Science annual conference. We put our current project on hold for the time being and began working on a project to help us characterize another species of bacteria in the Deinococcus genome. Through a series of biochemical tests, we will test Deinococcus metalli to determine its motility, its type of respiration, what enzyme it produces/breaks down, etc. 

Very little information is known about D. metalli and we are curious to know if it also  has some of the same characteristics as other Deinococcus species. The Deinococcus genome is known for its resilience when it comes to heat and UV radiation. In order to do this, we will perform the Oxidase, Urease, Catalase, Starch Hydrolysis, SIM, and Citrate tests.  

Methods 

3/18/24 

We started the week by prepping for the upcoming tests. We made two different medias because D. metalli’s recommended medium is R2A but we have noticed that most of the Deinococcus species we work with in the lab seem to grow better in TGY. We made both to be able to compare the growth.  Special media was made for the Urease, Citrate, SIM and Starch Hydrolysis tests. The SIM media was made transferred to tubes. 

3/19/24

In order to perform our tests, we needed to find positive and negative controls for each experiment. We went through the lists of bacteria that are commonly used for the tests and found some that we would be able to use. We also poured TGY + agar and R2A+ agar to make plates. 

3/20/24 

We were able to use a labmate's plates to streak our negative and positive control starter plates. We used four-way streaks and placed them in the appropriate incubators. For our experimental plates, we had to pull D. metalli from freezebac and streak it onto an R2A starter plate. It went into the 30℃ freezer. We hope to see results by Friday. 

3/22/24 

With all of our starter plates grown, we were able to streak all of the plates that we would be using for the experiments. This was a total of 

Using the four-way streak method, we streaked our negative and positive control plates. We streaked 2 TGY plates and 2 R2A plates with D. metalli for the catalase test. Another 2 TGY and 2 R2A plates were streaked for the Catalase test. One starch plate was streaked with D. metalli. Two SIM media tubes were inoculated with D. metalli. For the Urease test, 2 plates were streaked with D. metalli.

Results 

3/19/24

Our negative tests for each of the following tests are as follows:

Positive and Negative Controls

Test

Positive Control

Negative Control

Oxidase 

B. subtilis

S. epidermidis

Catalase 

S, epidermidis

N/A

Urease

S. epidermidis

B. subtilis

Sulfur

C. freundii

S. epidermidis

Indole

E. coli

S. epidermidis

Motility

C. freundii

S. epidermidis

Starch

B. subtilis

S. epidermidis




3/21/24 

Our D. metalli starter plate did not have very much growth so we left it in the incubator. Our starter plates had substantial growth so we removed them from the incubator.

Discussion 

By the end of the week, we were not where we thought we would be. There is still  a lot of work to do due to the fact that we had to grown D. metalli from freezebac. We also have to factor in growth time when it comes to growing something from freezebac. 

On Monday, we will be doing all of the tests and getting our results. Once we have the results, we will be able continue working on our abstract so that we can submit it on time. 

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