bio.display

The following experiments still need to be done:

• killing the bacteria with UV light (a 2 day experiment)
• test for different timings for the arabinose drops to have an effect (a 4 day experiment)

These experiments are going to be done mostly by Joeri Verasdonck and Vincent Van Rixel, students at the Leiden University.

Killing the bacteria with UV light

Have some plates that have the bacteria inside the agar, and try to expose the plates to UV light for different durations. we have 4 plates, so I’d recommend doing a logarithmic scale: 1, 10 and 100 minutes, and leave the 4th plate as a control.

then, take the plates exposed to UV light, cut some part out of them, and try to make a liquid culture out of each of them. overnight we should see which grew out, with expeting the control to grow of course.

Test for different timings

so far we’ve used plates that were grown in a 37 C incubator for our tests when dropping the arabinose on them. we should test if this works in a more relaxed manner, and only using room temperature and a fridge. this seems to be a 4 day experiment.

day 1

first create a new overnight liquid culture using one that’s on the table – should still be OK – you might also make one to see if the liquid culture grows overnight on room temperature, not in the shaker bath

day 2

create a number of plates with bacteria in them. I’d suggest:

• leaving a few on the table, to grow in room temperature overnight
• put some in the fridge right away
• put some in the fridge the next day, after it has grown overnight

day 3

put some of the plates left on the table in the fridge (see above)

get some plates from the table and from the fridge, and drop some arabinise on them

day 4

see if the plates turn fluorescent where they have arabinose.

leave the rest of the plates where they are, so we can drop arabinose on them next week, and see if they work. I’d suggest making a lot of plates, like 15, so that we can leave a lot in the fridge for next week (say 5-6 of those are put in the fridgge right away, 5-6 after 1 day of growth at room temperature). then next week each day take one plate of each kind, drop arabinose on it, and see the day after if it turned fluorescent.