Spring 2024: Week 11 - April 8, 2024 - April 12, 2024

 Introduction 

This week, we will continue our work with our Deinococcus metalli project. With the biochemical tests done, we will work on creating our poster for the Arizona Nevada Academy of Science. Since all of the testing has been done, we will be focusing on the writing portion of this project. 

Methods 

This was the first time my group and I worked on a scientific poster. We were unfamiliar with how to write an abstract so it took us some time. When it came to writing our abstract, we were told that we had to write enough to catch readers' attention but not too much because we would be writing more in detail in the other sections of the poster. This took us several attempts because it was our first time writing an abstract and we were unsure just how much to include. 

Creating the overall look of the poster was easier because we knew that the pictures of our results needed to have a big section since that was the bulk of our information. We also decided to add a morphology section since we found out that when grown in a less nutrient-rich media, D. metalli forms a biofilm. We had previously grown it in TGY broth and had not seen any formation of biofilm. We grew it in R2B, which is less nutrient-dense, and it formed a biofilm. This is not commonly seen in the Deinococcus genus so we decided to give it its own section in the poster. 

We wanted the poster to stand out at the conference so we took a risk with our color scheme. We chose an orange color palette and made sure to keep the colors consistent to make it stand out but not distract the readers’ attention from the actual substance of it. 


Results 

The finished poster at the Arizona Nevada Academy of Science conference is pictures below.

Discussion 

The experience of putting together a scientific poster was interesting and new to me. I really enjoyed the process because I learned a lot. It was also my first time at a scientific conference and it was interesting to see the different types of research being presented as well as how different people designed their posters and experiments. 

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