Bacteria Cultures

Post date: Jul 6, 2013 5:58:26 PM

On the first or second day of the internship, my supervisor, Shellie, and I cultured some diatoms so we can look at them under the microscope and practice filtering them. We had to make silica enriched sea water from scratch based on the recipe because there was none of that solution left in the lab. Although it definitely would have been easier and faster to just have the sea water already made, I really enjoyed making the it because I was able to see the process of making the sea water and what ingredients it takes rather than just have the sea water already made for me. We swirled in the diatoms that were growing in a gel petri dish previously. It has been a few weeks and a few of the diatom cultures have grown a little but there hasn't been a culture where the diatoms have grown really thick.

About a week ago, we went to look at some cultures under the microscope and with fluorescent light. Though it was frustrating to look across many microscope slides and not really knowing what I'm looking at or finding no cells, there were definitely some really cool cells I saw. I thought that looking at the fluoresced chlorophyll was especially fascinating because the bright colors indicated where most of the chlorophyll were. We also came across a very large diatom. Diatoms are very intriguing to look at because they have frustules surrounding them that make up very complex patterns.

We also had a field trip to Jasper Ridge. The hike was really beautiful and it was fun looking at the different kind of trees and learning about doing field work. Since I already wrote a lot, here are some pictures of Jasper Ridge:

I'm looking forward for the next few weeks to start filtering, doing some DNA extractions and going on a day cruise to experience some field work in oceanography.