Hey guys!

Still no phage here, but I am retesting my soil samples using the m. smeg, so hopefully there are some promising results when we get back to lab on Monday. Right now, though, it is the little battles I win that I am celebrating. I have been having some trouble with contamination on my plate a while ago. For four plates in a row I had some type of contamination, and most of the time the contamination bacteria looked very similar from plate to plate. The last plate I had with contamination was a couple of weeks ago and I deduced that it was originating from the phage buffer I was using. That week I threw away the contaminated phage buffer and used a fresh container instead. Since then, I have not had any contamination on any of my plates! I don’t think that the lack of contamination stemmed from any altered actions on my part; I have been plating aseptically in the same way. So hopefully my non-contaminated streak continues on into next week and the weeks beyond.

Anyway, I am really excited to see if I have any plaque this week from the m. smeg, since m. smeg seems to be easier to find bacteriophage in. Let’s keep our fingers crossed! Have a great Fall Break y’all!

Still no phage you guys. Because of phage buffer contamination, I repeated my serials dilutions for samples 4,5, and 6 and plated them again using new phage buffer. And I collected and prepared new enrichment cultures for two new samples, just to be ready to try more soil in case nothing is on the plate. Hopefully plaque show up on one of these samples, and there is no contamination.

But instead of dwelling on the lack of phage, I thought I would share this video my little sister sent me of bacteriophage. She is in freshman biology in high school, and I guess they watched this in class.  It’s really coincidental since we seem to be having an epic science video war in class. She was like, “Is this really what happens?!” Either way, I thought it was hilarious but really cool at the same time, and I’d like to think that when phage eventually infect my Arthrobacter, it will go something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzdwfwuVWUU

I know some of you, like myself, are getting a little discouraged with all the lack of phage, so I thought I could comfort you with this article!
It’s called Bacteriophage Therapy and it talks about all the clinical advances made because of bacteriophage. Phage are extremely effective in killing specific host bacteria, are safe to produce commercially, and can be genetically modified to accommodate mutations in bacterial strains. These qualities make phage ideal therapies to combat bacterial infections like lyme disease, laryngitis, gingivitis, in addition to many other common illnesses.
The article also tells of the history of phage therapy and all the trials and failure many scientists had to go through in order to make it to the point where the scientific community accepts phage therapy as “potential useful.” So don’t give up! Even though are research is not as near as complex as phage therapy, if they have some success, we are bound to have success.

Read the article below:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC90351/

We finally got some good news this time!

Even though I did not get any plaques or lysing on my plate, there were about ten people from our class who did. I have to admit, it was disappointing seeing next to nothing on my Arthrobacter plate and rampant contamination on my smeg plate, but I am glad to know that there is some hope out there. We finally have results that suggest that finding phage that infect Arthrobacter is achievable, and that makes me even more determined to find putative phage in my own samples.

Today I did a little troubleshooting myself today and I think I have a hypothesis as to what happened with my Arthrobacter plate. I will post the picture of my plate, but it basically was a lawn except for the 10^0 section of my plate. That section had  a little bit of bacteria growing on top of the top agar, in a splattered pattern. I realized, after looking at my lab notebook from the previous lab, that while spotting my 10^0 serial dilution, I splattered the dilution, possibly from pushing down on the pipettor too quickly or releasing the liquid too far from the plate, onto the plate. The latter makes more sense, because no other section of my plate had contamination. I think that the 10^0 filtrate was exposed to bacteria in the air as I was transferring it to the plate, and subsequently caused bacteria to grow on top of the top agar. If this did happen, it makes sense that there was no other contamination on the plate, as the contamination occurred after I performed the serial dilutions.

Today I re-filtered my soil samples, and put them on a new plate. I tried really hard to minimize contamination by working quickly and keeping things covered when not in use. Hopefully, there will be no contamination and the re-filtering of the samples will result in some phage in my plate! Let’s keep our fingers crossed for Attempt #4!

Prepare an Enrichment Culture. Again.

We are on our last of the three samples we collected before school starts and I’ll admit, I’m starting to get anxious about finding a phage. I feel like because we have all worked so hard and tried to follow the procedure as strictly as possible, we deserve a phage, at least one!

Sadly, that’s not how science works. Scientists can research one specific thing for years if not decades, so I guess three weeks isn’t too long to suffer without the results we want. Still, the anticipation is killing me! One good thing about not getting a phage, though, is that we get to repeat the same procedures over and over, and the repetition has truly helped me in understanding the procedures we are doing. The first time in the lab, I was so lost. I had to follow the procedure word for word, step by step, and it took an extremely long time to finish the day’s work. Even though I used the correct procedure, I have to say much of the “why” was still over my head.

Now, though, I’m proud to say I actually understand why we do what we do, instead of just grasping what the procedure is. Each step in the process is meant to contribute to a phage infecting the Arthrobacter. I now know why we add calcium chloride to the sample and why we perform serial dilutions. After just three weeks, I am now faster, more efficient, and more knowledgeable about the lab techniques we are using.

I am sort of grateful for the lack of phage, because it enabled me to better understand what we were doing before moving on to another procedure. I guess hard work paid off in a different way than I expected.

This class is a constant reminder that I am no longer in high school anymore.

Sure living in a dorm, not having to ask your parents to go places, and paying for things on your own are all indications of college life, but so far, all my classes now vaguely remind me of the classes I took my senior year of high school.

Except this one.

I feel like high school prepares students for getting into college, but fails to prepare students for the actual college experience. Our biology teaching lab is a prime example of this. I got good grades in high school, but I never really learned the true value of the scientific method or the relevance of modern research.  Where high school labs taught you to follow directions, this lab tells you to make your own procedure. Where high school labs asked you to repeat, this lab prompts you to discover. In high school, I would change my results to fit what was expected to happen, for fear of getting points counted off my lab report. In this lab, every result (expected or unexpected, success or failure) holds crucial information that can be used to create new questions or hypotheses. My motivation for performing well in a high school lab was to get a good grade; my motivation for doing well in this lab is to learn as much as I can so that I can then apply what I’ve learned to other courses, to other research, and even to everyday life.

I have learned more in two weeks of not being “successful” than I learned in a year of “successful” lab experiments in high school, and I think that is what college is all about.

So if I write this here, will it automatically get posted to the SEA page or do I have to put it there?

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