A Photo Montage by Maddy B.

From day one in the Tiny Earth Project, I decided I was going to take as many photos as possible.  One reason I did this was because when I get into a research project, I tend to forget the small unrecorded details. Another reason I wanted to take lots of photos was because I thought it would be fun to incorporate them into my final paper and presentations.

For this blog, I choose to highlight three things in images, the original soil collection, my original dilution plates, and one of my bacterial isolates “C3” and its chemical extraction.

For me, the program has had its ups and downs. I started with about 16 bacterial isolates that quickly dwindled down to 4. Some bacteria were difficult to isolate from Bacillus mycoides and others simply showed no antibiotic activity. I could have increased my chances of success by selecting more initial isolates for testing. When we were about to perform gel electrophoresis, Dr. Gonzalez-Orta taught us that you can mix tiny volumes on a piece of parafilm. All four of my isolates had a successful PCR, as verified by gel electrophoresis. We use PCR to see if bacteria are present in samples by looking for the presence of genetic material. We do gel electrophoresis to see if this worked by running our bacterial samples against controls that should have the bacterial genetic results we are looking for and a control that contains no genetic material. If the control that is supposed to contain no genetic material has some, we cannot accurately interpret or rely on our results.

I may not have learned everything about my isolates, but I learned a lot and since we froze these isolates in glycerol stocks, someone could always pick up where I left off. Two of my isolates were able to use citrate as a food source, one was able to reduce nitrates, and one was able to break down gelatin. These tests tell us about what the bacteria can use as food and what might be involved in the steps of metabolizing that food. It was inconclusive whether these bacteria can move without assistance. I was only able to perform extracts for two isolates. If I had more time and resources, I would have loved to also do extractions for my other two isolates.