Identifying the Mystery Bacteria

This week I have been getting all of my preliminary work done. I finished up my Ethics and

Safety training workshops and have finally started on lab work. I have thus far gotten

two Petri dishes inoculated with a mystery bacteria and it's my job to identify what it is

exactly. My job in the lab was to take an unknown broth of bacteria and to isolate the

bacteria to figure out what it was. I used a three quadrant streak plate method. And with

it, I was able to isolate the bacteria.

                                      

With that, the bacteria was put on a slide and dyed. Here are a few pictures of the bacteria

under a 40X magnification:

The bacteria on the isolation dish in the third quadrant was a collection of a small cluster

of colonies. They are a collection of punctiform colonies all with entire/ slightly

undulated edges. They are raised with smooth surfaces. Also, the bacteria colonies are

transparent with a butyrous consistency with a yellow pigment. Looking under the

microscope the bacteria was Gram-negative with a red color with accents of pink.

The Bacteria was also rod-shaped so it was a Bacilli.

To figure out what the bacteria actually was two tests were conducted. The first was

an Oxidase test, the bacteria turned purple so it tested positive and so afterward a

Glucose Fermentation test was done to determine if the bacteria has a negative or

positive fermentation and it is acidic or not. The test was a flop the base of the tube turned

red while the inside of the Durham tube had a gas bubble and it was yellow on the inside.

Pictured here:

With this anomaly, another Petri dish was inculcated and put into a 42 degree (Celcius)

Incubator, it will be known by Friday what kind of bacteria it is. If bacteria grows

it will be Pseudomonas aeruginosa if there is no growth it will be Pseudomonas

oryzihabitans.

A side note, my semester-long project I have been wanting to something that is

more Statistics based since that is my major so I have decided to work on looking at the

bone thickness of  X-rays taken of skeletons from Egypt. And to prepare for my

statistical work I have been given a book on Stats that I am reading!

--- John Burns