Bacteria Smells Funky

Apparently, meeting in the laboratory instead of the classroom in the morning was not an occasion as rare as I had thought. This morning, we began class in the lab again; this time, however, we spent the whole morning until lunch doing lab work.

Morning in the lab

The Enterotube is the thing with the blue cap

We started off with looking at the Enterotubes that were incubated overnight from yesterday. We recorded any changes in color of the different agars, and certain reagents are added to the indole and Voges-Proskauer agars to observe the changes, if any. Depending on whether there was a positive or negative result, there was a series of numerical values assigned that are added up to form a five-digit code, which we looked up in a reference manual to identify a specific bacteria. This is a usually good test, but our lab teacher, Dawn, warned us that there are frequent occasions where the Enterotubes are not always accurate, which was a relief to me since our results were a little muddy.

After the Enterotubes, we performed the oxidase test, which took less than a minute. To perform this, we simply took pure cultures from our streaks and swipe it across a piece of chemical paper that turned color, indicating oxidase negative or oxidase positive. The oxidase test does not allow us to identify bacteria, but it is good for using to double-check results to see if the characteristics match.

Finally, we performed the most accurate test, the one that would tell us the most accurate identification of the samples we collected as possible. This test relied on the PCR process we completed yesterday, where we amplified the DNA of the bacterial cultures. Today, we received the DNA sequence on the computer, and we used a program called Blast to put the sequence into the database, which searched through its collection of known bacterial DNA sequence for a match or the closest match to the sequence we input. It took only a minute for the program to respond with the different possible bacteria and strain, along how much the sequences matched in percentages.

We put our results on the chalkboard

Everyone shared their results with the class on the board. As soon as we did so, we were allowed to be dismissed for lunch.

After lunch, we went back to the classroom and began a lecture on vaccines. We talked about smallpox, and how it was eradicated because everybody was vaccinated. We discussed factors that allowed the smallpox to be eradicated more easily than other infectious diseases. Everyone seemed really tired after lunch, and Dr. Fineschi was concerned because we seemed so quiet compared to the usual chattering. She really is a sweet teacher; she even asked us if we wanted to stop for today and just work on our projects, but we voted as a class to continue onto the next activity.

She began teaching us how to read a scientific paper, which was really cool. We started looking at the diagrams and figures, which was actually harder than one would have expected. She wanted us to figure out the meaning behind the pictures without reading the captions, and that was veryu interesting. It was a bit difficult at certain points, but she always pushed us at the right direction whenever we were stuck, and I’m actually very proud of what we managed to understand and figure out as a class.

Sheryl (on the right)

Dinner was a pleasant surprise. I went down to eat with Karla, and because the dining hall was getting quite full by this time, a lady sat down and shared the table with us. She began talking with us, and we found out she was an assistant principal back in Texas (she looks so young we though she was a student here at first) who came here for a four-week training! Her name is Sheryl, and she also came from California. She is even from East Oakland! We talked a bit about what schools Karla and I wanted to go to, and we also talked about differences between public schools and charter schools. Lastly, Sheryl and I both agreed that California, particularly the Bay Area, has the best weather, but Austin, Texas is apparently very nice as well. Overall, it was a great dinner, and it was so nice meeting her.

Karla was bored after dinner, so we went into my room. Michelle wasn’t there, and Karla and I just began talking about books. Our conversation stayed on books for quite a while before it strayed to other things like the clubs we belong to in school and even to anime. We had so much fun just talking that we didn’t even realize we talked for almost three hours until I had to leave to go shower.

Karla <3 

It has been a week of class already, and I can’t decide if I feel like if everything it is passing by really fast or really slows. Sometimes, I feel like it is both, even though that does not make much sense. Tomorrow, my cohort and I will be going to the Art Institute of Chicago, where we will be meeting Ms. Sciacca, and I am extremely looking forward to it!