After two days, my plate looks cloudy compared to the control. The control plate was very clear with no sign of contamination. My plate looks like it had been contaminated (probably from my errors in Lab Day 2) and looked like some parts of TA didn’t settle properly.

Detailed Procedure

1. Took 0.5 Arthro vial from the back and added 10 microliters of enriched lysate with a pipette in the aseptic zone. Let it sit for 15 mins.
2. With rest of group, add 2.0 mL of LB Broth and 2.5 microliters of 1M CaCl2 with a pipette
3. As soon as each group members waited 15 mins, we added 2.5 mL of 2X TA.
4. Spilt above mixture equally into 3 vials.
5. Took one of the vials and added the mixture from step 1 and used pipette to mix it thoroughly.
6. My vial tilted over, which resulted in a small spill.
7. Poured the rest of the vial onto a separate plate labeled as “Plaque Assay”
8. Wait 10 mins for it to solidfy

Thoughts

• Due to a small spill in step 6, I was unable to get exactly 4.5 mL onto my plate.
• This might have caused some contamination.

Questions

• Can certain oak trees be more prone to bacteria
• Turns out the soil from the tree my group and I took was from a red oak. If we can get soil from a white oak in our area, we might be able to find plaque from tests. We would need to find another red oak and white oak to test this.
• Does the present of Arthro appear more dominant in one oak tree species than the others? If so, in this species, is there a correlation between the presence of Arthro and the present of oak wilt fungus growth?
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  plaque assay plate

  

  control plate from Lab Day 2. Shows no sign of contamination

  

  signs of contamination. No sign of plaque

  

  second pic of spot test results