Imaging

This week I was subculture my bacteria that was previously contaminated. By regrowing the isolated colonies for two days I was able to obtain enough bacteria to cover my samples. I arranged the samples in nine petri dishes. I had three dishes for each sample type, all with one of the three bacteria types. Each dish had a sample in each quadrant. I then allowed these to grow for another two days. On the second day i removed two samples from each dish and mounted them to be viewed in the SEM. Each sample could only stay in the SEM for a very short amount of time a not to damage or destroy a semi-wet sample or harm the microscope. Over the break we will be using the hydrogel to mount and view the other half of the samples with the cooling chamber.

This week was stressful only because I knew Christmas break was quickly approaching and I did not want this to compromise my timeline for growing and imagining my samples. I spent a lot of extra time in the lab room and did some rather tedious tasks, however I think this only improved my patience and lab technique.