bio.display

Looking at the results of yesterdays experiment in the morning brought about a better feeling. It seems that things are working, though differently than expected.

For the samples in the microplate, the results show overnight that all of the bacteria that we put arabinose on became fluorescent, even the ones with the lowest concentration. If there’s a difference in fluorescence with regards to the arabinose concentration, it’s not visible to the naked eye. Only the wells which were not added arabinose at all (but simply water instead) remained non-fluorescent.

One startling but very good result is that the arabinose doesn’t dissipate in an agar gel that easily. Thus, can create drawings in the bacteria on the agar by selectively dropping arabinose on different locations – and only those locations are going to turn fluorescent. This is a great result.

The problem is that the level of fluorescence in bacteria that grows inside the agar gel (as opposed to on top of if) is much lower. This might be that the arabinose doesn’t reach too many bacteria, as it is not dissipating well in the agar. It might also be that there are fewer bacteria growing this way as compared to colonies, which are quite dense.

I also grew a liquid culture with arabinose in it, just to see a glowing flask of bacteria 🙂