Rationale: Since my plaque assay from last class turned out negative, I have to start over collecting soil and washing. I decided to keep things simple since it was raining and collect soil from right outside the BSB.

Procedure:

1. Collected soil from outside of BSB and measured metrics of tree.
2. Added between 2mL and 3mL of soil to a 15mL tube and filled with 10mL of LB broth.
3. Shook vigorously for 15 minutes.
4. Spun at 3000g for 5 minutes.
5. Filtered using a 0.22mm top filter and a vacuum under the vent hood.
6. Added 0.5mL of arthrobacter and placed in shaking incubator.

Observations:

Due to the conditions outside I couldn’t get an accurate measurement of the tree height. I will update the height once conditions are better. The circumference of the trunk at 137cm off the ground is 100.48cm. The diameter for the canopy was 8.23m.

Interpretations and Next Steps: Now that I have washed the soil, I need to collect metadata on the soil. Next week I will start the process of checking for the presence of phage using PCR.