Well someday soon my friends, this ride will come to an end
But we can't just get in line again.
(Streetlight Manifesto)
"When you feel you're about spring, what you, Governor Romney, think is the checkmate moment of the debate and your debate opponent says to you 'Please. Proceed...'" - Jon Stewart
Yes, I chose Francesella tularensis, otherwise known as rabbit fever.
Type:
bacteria
Gram Stain:
gram negative
Morphology:
small rods
Habitat:
water, soil, animal carcasses
Disease symptoms:
All modes of transmission have fever and swelling of the lymph glands, skin contact (including bites) have skin ulcers, ingestion has sore throat, mouth ulcers, tonsillitis; inhalation (or untreated) has cough, chest pain, difficulty breathing
Mode of Transmission:
tick and flea bites, skin contact with infected animals, ingestion of contaminated water, laboratory exposure, inhalation of contaminated dust or aerosols, bioterrorism
Treatment:
antibiotics for 10-21 days
Prevention:
Use of insect repellent, wearing gloves when handling sick or dead animals, avoid mowing over dead animals
Interesting points:
Researched and used as a biological weapon during WWII and up to two decades afterwards.
Morphology: adult female is 80-100 mm long and 0.24-0.30 mm in diameter, adult male is 40 mm long and 0.10 mm in diameter
Habitat: lymphatic vessels of a human (mostly found in Asia, Africa, S. Pacific) and mosquitoes
Disease symptoms: Causes 90% of the cases of lymphatic filariasis. You can be asymptomatic, or you could have lymphodema (swelling of the lymph vessels) which causes skin to thicken and harden which ends up being elephantiasis. Or you can start getting pulmonary tropical eosinophilia syndrome - cough, shortness of breath, wheezing.
Mode of transmission: mosquitoes
Treatment: most effective treatment is diethylcarbamazine (DEC) but only if you test positive for Wuchereria bancrofti. You may still have deformities that would require surgery.
Prevention: avoid mosquitoes
Interesting points:
WHO is attempting to eradicate this disease by having the population of affected countries take antifilaial drugs on a regular basis for 5 yrs. Sri Lanka has eradicated this disease (lymphatic filariasis) by using this method.
Last edited by Sally Rosebud; 05-26-2012 at 04:09 PM.
Prevention:
Use of insect repellent, wearing gloves when handling sick or dead animals, avoid mowing over dead animals
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by io Kukulcan
There's this guy I work with, I don't know him, but he's got a 6th finger, a little pinky just dangling off his pinky knuckle, it's not connected by bone and muscle, it's like a sausage link, just hanging there.
It fucking pisses me off.
Microorganism: Wuchereria bancrofti
Morphology: adult female is 80-100 mm long and 0.24-0.30 mm in diameter, adult male is 40 mm long and 0.10 mm in diameter
How is something that is 40-100mm long considered a microorganism?
P2
__________________ Genius by birth... slacker by choice. Phoenix's Rarely Updated Blog The indiscriminate use of vulgar language is the linguistic crutch for inarticulate motherfucking sons of bitches. I can figure the number of millimeters in a light year, but don't ask me to do algebra. And everything is green and submarine...
Most living things that are visible to the naked eye in their adult form are eukaryotes, including humans. However, a large number of eukaryotes are also microorganisms. Unlike bacteria and archaea, eukaryotes contain organelles such as the cell nucleus, the Golgi apparatus and mitochondria in their cells. The nucleus is an organelle that houses the DNA that makes up a cell's genome. DNA itself is arranged in complex chromosomes. Mitochondria are organelles vital in metabolism as they are the site of the citric acid cycle and oxidative phosphorylation. They evolved from symbiotic bacteria and retain a remnant genome. Like bacteria, plant cells have cell walls, and contain organelles such as chloroplasts in addition to the organelles in other eukaryotes. Chloroplasts produce energy from light by photosynthesis, and were also originally symbiotic bacteria.
Unicellular eukaryotes are those eukaryotic organisms that consist of a single cell throughout their life cycle. This qualification is significant since most multicellular eukaryotes consist of a single cell called a zygote at the beginning of their life cycles. Microbial eukaryotes can be either haploid or diploid, and some organisms have multiple cell nuclei (see coenocyte). However, not all microorganisms are unicellular as some microscopic eukaryotes are made from multiple cells.
Most living things that are visible to the naked eye in their adult form are eukaryotes, including humans. However, a large number of eukaryotes are also microorganisms. Unlike bacteria and archaea, eukaryotes contain organelles such as the cell nucleus, the Golgi apparatus and mitochondria in their cells. The nucleus is an organelle that houses the DNA that makes up a cell's genome. DNA itself is arranged in complex chromosomes. Mitochondria are organelles vital in metabolism as they are the site of the citric acid cycle and oxidative phosphorylation. They evolved from symbiotic bacteria and retain a remnant genome. Like bacteria, plant cells have cell walls, and contain organelles such as chloroplasts in addition to the organelles in other eukaryotes. Chloroplasts produce energy from light by photosynthesis, and were also originally symbiotic bacteria.
Unicellular eukaryotes are those eukaryotic organisms that consist of a single cell throughout their life cycle. This qualification is significant since most multicellular eukaryotes consist of a single cell called a zygote at the beginning of their life cycles. Microbial eukaryotes can be either haploid or diploid, and some organisms have multiple cell nuclei (see coenocyte). However, not all microorganisms are unicellular as some microscopic eukaryotes are made from multiple cells.
Pie is good.
P2
This user laughed so hard that they peed a little:
Yesterday in my micro class, we started our own bacterial stock tubes by aseptically transferring from our teacher's stock to our clean tubes. Was fun! We have 22 different strains that we'll have to use over the rest of the quarter. We'll practice staining them, etc. Hopefully we transferred them cleanly, otherwise we'll have contaminated stock!
__________________
"Go away! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough!" - Karl Marx, last words
Non-micro people: the following will be boring. No need to read further.
So today we prepped our media for isolating individual strains of bacteria. Made our tryptic soy agar plates and nutrient broths, etc. On Monday we'll be inoculating them with both a culture from the environmental swabs we took last week (Becca will be using the Dyson swab, I'll be using the swab from my water bottle) and a mixture of 2 bacteria from our bank of 22 strains that we're maintaining (E. coli and P. marcescens).
Lesson learned today: organize your stuff BEFORE you start! We had nutrient broth, tryptic soy broth (TSB), tryptic soy agar broth (TSA broth) and nutrient agar broth all cooking at the same time, and about 5000 test tubes and petri dishes laying around. Once we finally autoclaved all of our stuff, we realized that we forgot to include our micropipettor tips, so we'll have to go back into the autoclave on Monday. Grrr. I'm frustrated with my own disorganization, and our teacher didn't look too impressed either.
We actually tested hand-washing and drying via Dyson AirBlade or paper towels. After 6 tests (3 from my lab partner and 3 from me, all on separate days) we found that the plates that received the Dyson swab all grew more bacteria. My theory is that the paper towel actually helps to rub off bacteria - not that the Dyson ADDED bacteria.
Now we're cultivating the Dyson bacteria through all the stain testing, so that we can determine which type it is.
Well, we successfully isolated the two bacteria in our Mixed Culture - beautiful slants.
And, of the two bacteria in my unknowns, I'm nearly positive that one of them is Proteus mirabilis, so I'm way ahead of the game there. Tomorrow we'll see how all of our cultures grew on phenylethyl alcohol agar and tryptose agar - experimenting with different media, now. Tomorrow also, we'll start staining.
Tomorrow we get a quiz in lab about the microscope, shapes of bacteria, pH, stuff... Then we'll see what our Staphylococcus epidermis did in the nutrient broth and the nutrient agar.
We've been doing an isolation streak the last three labs, guessing we'll get to do it again tomorrow. We have also been staining to differentiate between gram negative and gram positive bacteria. We are using bacteria grown in broth and in agar, so two slides for each bacteria. My lab partner and I got two of the bacteria done in class. We also learned how to isolate DNA. Didn't do anything with it though.
We have used the manitol salt agar once, with three bacteria, TSA is what we are usually using, did not practice streak isolation today. Today we made more slides, and yes, we are staining to see the gram positive and gram negative (crystal violet and safranin), though that was Tuesday when we learned about that. Today we did staining with malachite green, safranin again, and a couple others which I'll have to look up since I can't remember them off-hand.
Okay! We've been doing Gram stains, Ziehl-Neelsen Acid-Fast stains, Schaeffer-Fulton endospore stains and capsule stains.
With the gram stains, we used both broth and nutrient agar cultures of Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis and Neiserria sicca.
Gram stain is by far the easiest to do (even though you use two dyes). This includes preparing your slide (make sure you heat-fix it with flame!), then covering the slide with crystal violet, letting it sit for a minute, rinse with water, cover slide with grams iodine, let sit for a minute, rinse with water, rinse with decolorizer, rinse with water, cover slide with safranin and let it sit for a minute, rinse with water again. Blot dry. View slide with microscope. The purpose of this is to distinguish between gram positive and gram negative bacteria. Gram positive bacteria will stain violet because they have no outer membrane and a thick peptidoglycan layer to catch all the dye. The grams iodine sets the crystal violet dye, the decolorizer (only used for 30 seconds or less) is used to wash the dye from the gram negative bacteria. The safranin is a pinkish dye which will now stick to the gram negative bacteria. Why do this? If you are sick, your health care providers can do this simple test to narrow down the possibilities of what is causing your illness. Gram positive and negative bacteria don't react the same to antibiotics, so trying to figure out what it could be can help you!
You can also see two different shapes of bacteria here, coccus (the round ones) and bacillus (the rod shaped ones).
Last edited by Sally Rosebud; 06-27-2012 at 01:49 PM.
Bear with me, I have a quiz on this stuff tomorrow!
The Schaeffer-Fulton endospore stain is a stain used to find endospores. Endospores are dormant bacteria. For this stain you first need to prepare your slide. Once your slide is ready you'll put it on the steaming tray. Put a small piece of paper towel over the area where the bacteria is and then cover it with malachite green and let it sit for 5 minutes (make sure it doesn't dry out). After five minutes, take the slide off the steaming tray and let it cool for 5 minutes. Remove the paper towel and rinse with water then cover the slide with safranin and let it sit for one minute. When that's done, rinse the slide with water, blot dry and view.
All the green dots are endospores.
Last edited by Sally Rosebud; 06-27-2012 at 04:57 PM.
Ziel-Neelsen Acid-Fast stain is similar to the last stain. We used Mycobacterium gordonae and Staphylococcus epidermis.
Acid-fast is a physical property of some bacteria (Mycobacteria and Norcardia). All Mycobacteria will stain red while everything else will be blue. After preparing your slide, put it on the steaming tray, cover with a small piece of paper towel, cover with Carbolfuchsin and let sit for 5 minutes. Take the slide off the steam tray and let cool for 5 minutes then remove the paper towel and rinse with water. Wash the slide with acid-fast decolorizer and then cover with Loefflers methylene blue and let sit for a minute. Rinse with water, blot dry and TADA!
Last edited by Sally Rosebud; 06-27-2012 at 04:57 PM.
Yesterday we did the capsule stain using Enterobacter aerogenes grown in skim milk broth. We put a drop at one end of our slide then we used one of these:
to spread it over the slide. Wait for it to dry then put crystal violet over the slide and wait for five minutes. Rinse with water, blot dry and view!
This is what mine looked like in areas:
The capsules are the white spots and the bacteria is in the middle, they kinda look like coffee beans.
Capsules are there to protect the bacteria from phagocytosis (being eaten!) and can also help the bacteria stick better to certain surfaces.
For viewing all these slides we used 100x and oil.
Yesterday we also inoculated media so we can identify it tomorrow. We used skim milk agar, starch agar, DNAse agar and Spirit Blue agar. On the skim milk agar we are growing B. subtilis and S. epidermis. On the starch agar we are growing B. subtilis and S. epidermis. On the DNAse agar we are growing S. aureus and S. epidermis. On the Spirit Blue agar we are growing E. coli and S. aureus. We got to work under the hood and also use this:
to sterilize our loops instead of the Bunsen burner flame.
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