8/20/2018

soil washing

Objective: todays goal is to extract the phages from the soil that was collected on 8/20/2018 , labeled soil sample A.

Supplies: sample collected on Monday, 50 ml test tube, centrifuge, LB Broth, pippetes

Procedure:1) set up an aseptic zone by cleaning your desk with Cidecon (wipe till dry) and ethanol ( 70%) ( wipe on the desk and let it evaporate) after clearing the table.

2) lit the ethanol lamp to set up an air current to help keep other microbes from getting into tube when it is open.

3) take the tube filled with the collected dirt and add LB broth into the tube to 35 ml.

4) shake the test tube for 15 minutes using hand and vortex machine

5) put the test tube into the centrifuge  at 3000g for 5 minutes.

6) ran out of time so the sample was stored in the fridge to continue the process on Friday.

Results: the end product was the large particles deposited at the bottom of the tube. the solution was still very dark and dense.

the tree from which the soil sample was extracted is located below. the mass of the test tube after the LB broth was added was 51.105g and the LB  broth was poured into the solution at 3:09 pm.

Analysis: due to the dense nature of the supernatant  in the test tube, it seemed that it was going to take a long time to filter the lysate from the supernatant. the aseptic zone was properly created and maintained.

Future notes: manage time more effectively and work faster so as to finish this process at the same time. Keeping the supernatant solution idle for a few days might affect the time it takes to separate the lysate from the supernatant because some of the solid might mix again  with the part of the tube containing the phages.