The Pursuers: Mission Impossible Dos: Did we kill the bacteria?Isourbacteriaobligateanaeorobe? What about that lightsaber?

Mission Impossible Dos: Did we kill the bacteria? Is our bacteria obligate anaeorobe? What about that lightsaber?

Class: Thursday, November 14, 2013

Today was exciting! We checked the results of our last lab. In that lab we prepared several tests. In one test we used my phone, swabbed it, and spread it on an agar plate. On the agar plate we placed four disinfectants/antibacterial cleaning agents--2% Lysol spray, Lysol disinfectant spray (in Mandarin orange), foaming antibacterial hand soap, and Lysol disinfectant wipes. The purpose of this test was to prove [or disprove] the antibacterial properties of the cleaning agents.

Did the cleaning agents kill the bacteria that was on my phone? Let's look!

Do you see any bacteria?!

We saw a little bit of bacteria in two of the four quadrants. Do you see them? There's bacterial growth in Lysol (Mandarin orange) spray and the antibacterial hand soap! So now we know neither of those two cleaning agents would be too effective with cleaning my phone.

Next, we checked on our mystery bacteria we put in the air-lock chamber or the anoxalte chamber during our last lab. We were testing our bacteria for growth properties [obligate aerobe/anaeorbe]. Today we revealed that property! What will it be? Can our bacteria grow in an environment without oxygen or does it need oxygen to grow? Let's open up that chamber and see!

We took it out of the chamber and revealed our bacteria! We shared the agar plate with Mary and Jess, so I must clarify, our bacteria is in the top half of the plate. As we can see, there is a little bit of bacterial growth! There we go bacteria J, I knew you had it in you!

Last lab, we made a concoction of all of our bacterium in water and zapped it with a steripen to test its effectiveness against bacteria. The Steripen uses UV light to kill all bacteria in water making it safe to drink. We swabbed the bacteria infested water before UV exposure, after UV exposure, and after a second round of UV. Let's see if it actually works or not!

Left-Right: BeforeUV, 1st UV, 2nd UV

Well, this didn't make much sense to us! Sure, the "before" plate does, just look at all that bacteria! Gross! The second plate shows a significant difference in the amount of bacteria. The third plate [after 2nd time of UV exposure] shows more bacteria. In theory, there should have been less. We think we may have done something wrong, so we went ahead and prepared a second trial test with the Steripen. Hopefully this time we do it, the results are what they are supposed to be!