IUBio

Help an undergraduate student

N10 limbic_lesion at hotmail.com
Thu Mar 3 18:26:58 EST 2005


ERM

I truelly hope none of the CHEMICALS you use infringe Olympic guide lines on banned substances  for Algal atheletes and that the sports in questions
do not exploit  or other wise  infringe the rights of the contestants  as derailed in the   UNs 900 Page leaflet "Autotrophic and  little species rights legislation 182 daft"  

God since politcal corrwectness cut in I feel guilty every time I hear the waste autoclauve hit 121 these days :)  If bacteria every take over Ill be a war criminal  GASP !

I used to do what you do with Bacillus circulans, the colonies rotate  for some reason WHY ??? ( hint student project alert) . Modulating the viscosity of the agar groslly and predicatbley  effected rotation rate.  Apart from seeing how much of a spin I could get I had the idea of creating a Bacillus clock  until  I discovered female students existed  but I was rather close to minor break thorough.

On the motilty front and in realtion to food microbiology SOME ONE NEEDS to develop a MOTILITY method which works more than 0% of the time for 
Campylobacter species.  In SOME CIRCLES (PUN do yer get it lol ) this suggestion will put the cat amongst the pigeons ( more puns) . DUCKS


Bets N10 :) 




  "Tanya Kuritz" <kuritzt at ornl.gov> wrote in message news:5.1.1.5.2.20050303173242.02f2d850 at mail.ornl.gov...
  Thanks, Lesley and N10 for this lively, enjoyable discussion and protocols!  Sounds like we are back to good old days in this group when people thought and wrote about micro.

  I like watching cyanobacterial races.  Take Oscillatoria or Trichodesmium strains, put a grid into your microscope's left ocular (calibration is optional - HA!) and measure the speed of cyanobacterial movement on a slide, agar coating slows it down but makes watching and recording easier.  The speed changes a lot depending on what you add to the medium and on the illumination source and intensity.  Group chemicals by the extent of their effect on the speed.  Chemicals that affect photosynthesis will be most effective.  This exercise requires no staining, no immersion objective if you do not have one.  

  Tanya

  At 10:27 PM 3/3/2005 +0000, N10 wrote:



    "The_Warrior" <almahdi at magma.ca> wrote in message 
    news:sYadnY5g8ohSFbvfRVn-pg at magma.ca...
    > Hello every one, I'm a biology student in a University, and I truelly need
    > your assistance in choosing a good topic for an undergraduate microbiology
    > project. We tried isolating and quantitatively analyzing bacteria from
    > common uncooked food products found in a grocery store such as chicken 
    > meat,
    > fish, beef, and yogurt as a control.
    >
    > Then, to generally identify any bacteria isolated from the food samples 
    > and
    > to test the antibiotic resistance spectrum of the isolated bacteria. After
    > these steps, we would follow few microbiology techniques that we learned 
    > in
    > the labratory which would help us better analyze the metabolic properties 
    > of
    > the bacteria. Unfortunately we were told by the instructor that this topic
    > is not challenging at all because it had been done so many times.
    >
    > Some of the techniques we thought of doing is using
    > The following equipment:
    >
    > Incubator (already present in lab)
    >
    > Centrifuge (already present in lab)
    >
    > Blender
    >
    > Sterile Water (or MMA)
    >
    > Nutritional Agar (NA) and Petri dishes (around 20-30 dishes)
    >
    > Sterile test tubes (For serial dilutions) - approximately 20
    >
    > Cell lysing solution (EDTA or any other sufficient to lyse bacteria)
    >
    > Antibiotic filter discs (Generic ones such as Kanamycin, Streptomycin,
    > Penicillin)
    >
    > Test tube vortexer
    >
    > Gram staining reagents (Crystal violet, Gram's iodine, safranin, 95%
    > ethanol, slide)
    >
    > Microscope
    >
    >
    >
    > Can anyone help my partner and I in choosing a good topic to do for an
    > experiment?
    >
    >
    >
    > We either can do literature based project or experimental based project. 
    > We
    > really prefer the experemental based projects because our course is an
    > expermental microbiology course, so can you help us?
    >
    >
    >
    > I'll wait for your reply
    >
    > Thank you!!
    >
    >
    >

    HI

    I think Lesley Roberts area sounds  much more interesting than  any of mine 
    but here are a few ideas for you to chew on

    1) How about  attempting to develop a novel rapid method for Gram stain. 
    i.e. an alternative  a system that does
    not require prolonged staining  and fumbling about with slides and 
    microscopes etc. I read something about this years ago but never followed it 
    up Ithink it had to do with cell wall reaction to Pottasium hydroxide

    2) Aerobiology; the microbiology of atmospheres; A huge area with little ( 
    but good)  research completed . Suggestion ;
    Do organism isolated from the air need special resuscitation i.e. are they 
    damaged or perhaps in a different morphological form which
    reduces effective recovery

    3)  Which organisms are responsible for smelly feet..you may laugh HA ha but 
    serious research needed even these days If you find out let me know  after 
    all it was my idea lol

    4) Get controversial : Why not see if an array of common novel food 
    addatives  produce auxtrophic mutations  in ecoli :)
    Heck you could start with substances such as  Chlorinated sugars and 
    Aspartamine  and then run for your life (hehe)

    5 ) Candida ablicans  causative agent of thrush  which by all accounts has 
    no 100 % treatment avialable. there you go lads a billion compounds to 
    screen
    ,  full tank of gas .......your on a mission from god lol

    Read  a few copies of Nature or New scientist  that will help with ideas, 
    Visit that big building with books in it ( Its a library) read Biological 
    abstracts  or the Journal of Applied Bacteriology you will get a million 
    ideas.


    Hope this helps good luck with your studies and do well


    Best N10




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