bio.display

Yesterday’s initial tests with the printer seems to have worked out fine. The rudimentary figures I tried to draw show up from the plates. Open questions about preparations for today were also answered by Maarten.

One of yesterday’s open questions was the amount of ampicillin that should be added both the liquid culture and the LB agar. It’s clear now – the final concentration should be 50 μg/ml, and thus I have to calculate the 250mg/ml concentration of ampicillin accordingly. Thus, the preparations I’ve done today included, for the liquid culture:

• 100 ml liquid LB
• 100 μl of our ampicillin solution
• and a swipe of bacteria

For the plates I made:

• 1l of LB – agar (0.75% agar)
• 2ml of our ampicillin solution
• 50ml of overnight liquid culture of the bacteria

Let’s hope that the way too low amount of ampicillin added yesterday still makes things work for now, as I’ve printed all 10 plates today, that were prepared yesterday. Another risk is that I might have mixed the bacteria with the LB agar while it was too hot. Unfortunately there’s no other way than to guess by hand if the LB agar is cold enough…

Today I tested printing with a wide variety of drop sizes and drop distances. We’ll see tomorrow which ones work out the best, if the plates are any good 🙂