Second week of school, first week of internship

I’m glad to be back and I’m really happy that I started my internship since this week, which is the second week of spring semester (hopefully my last semester), so that gives us more time to learn from Josh and Matt and do more cool experiments. I’m so excited about our project this semester; I’ll keep my fingers crossed to get the results from bioluminescent bacteria because so far we couldn’t make it glow!

So I started my first week with making Tryptic Soy Broth (TSB). Tryptic Soy Broth (TSB) is a nutritious medium that supports the growth of a wide variety of microorganisms, especially common aerobic and facultatively anaerobic bacteria (bd.com). The steps were pretty much the same as TSA that I did before - weighting 30.0 g of the powder and add it into the 2L flask, containing 1L distilled water. Then you heat it up and warm slightly to completely dissolve the powder. 

Tryptic Soy Broth 

Heat up the solution 

Before autoclaving it, I made the solution to three racks of test tubes with autoclave tape on top of them. Finally after 46 minutes autoclaving, the TSB’s test tubes were ready. I left them for a couple minutes at room temperature and then put them in incubator.  

TSB test tubes ready for autoclave

TSB test tubes after autoclave

But besides working on bioluminescent bacteria and TSB in the first week, my sister and I checked the cadavers and sprayed the cadaver with moistening solution. We also tried to do the blood test ourselves to find out our blood type. According to the results, I am blood type A+.

I also did transformation bacteria for E.Coli and Agrobacteria two times during last week. Normally bacteria exchange genetic material with other bacteria and they try to change to the one that can survive better. Transformation in bacterial cells occurs when the cell joins naked DNA into its genetic material. I placed the mixtures of transformation solution and plasmid DNA (in +pGLO tube only) on ice, then rapidly transferred them to a hot water bath (42ºC ) for about fifty seconds, and then placed them back on ice again – this procedure is called heat shock and “increases the permeability of the cell membrane to DNA”. After two minutes, I incubated them on ice. I added 250µl of LB Nutrient Broth. After 10 minutes, I started adding the solution from tubes to agar plates and spread it across the plate with a sterile loop. After 24 hours in the 37 ºC incubator, I checked the plates with UV light and the +pGLO for E.Coli was glowing.