Microbial Life from the Soil in a Tree Stump
Location
CoLab
Start Date
3-5-2019 12:00 PM
End Date
3-5-2019 1:15 PM
Document Type
Poster
Description
In this experiment, a soil sample was taken from my front yard. It was specifically collected from a tree that had been recently cut down with the stump leftover. The soil was located inside the tree trunk stump. I thought it would be interesting to collect my dirt sample from inside the tree compared to the regular ground because it may have contained more interesting microbes. These thoughts proved to be true after the following procedures. The serial dilution procedure was created on 4 different agar plates and then transferred to create a master plate. My master plate proved to be very colorful from the average beige, yellow, or off-white to the dark purple and bright red microbes. After the master plate, I tested the microbes from my home dirt with the safe relatives of ESKAPE pathogens to see if any microbes could inhibit the growth of the “relative” strains. Most of the microbe candidates from my home dirt master plate, proved to show none or very little inhibition. I took the red microbe candidate and tested it once more against the safe relative of the ESKAPE pathogen where it was able to build a zone of inhibition. The red microbe proved to be the only one that had any sign of a zone of inhibition, even if it was small. After this experiment, a new and far stronger candidate would have to be found to find any antibody resistance.
Image
Microbial Life from the Soil in a Tree Stump
CoLab
In this experiment, a soil sample was taken from my front yard. It was specifically collected from a tree that had been recently cut down with the stump leftover. The soil was located inside the tree trunk stump. I thought it would be interesting to collect my dirt sample from inside the tree compared to the regular ground because it may have contained more interesting microbes. These thoughts proved to be true after the following procedures. The serial dilution procedure was created on 4 different agar plates and then transferred to create a master plate. My master plate proved to be very colorful from the average beige, yellow, or off-white to the dark purple and bright red microbes. After the master plate, I tested the microbes from my home dirt with the safe relatives of ESKAPE pathogens to see if any microbes could inhibit the growth of the “relative” strains. Most of the microbe candidates from my home dirt master plate, proved to show none or very little inhibition. I took the red microbe candidate and tested it once more against the safe relative of the ESKAPE pathogen where it was able to build a zone of inhibition. The red microbe proved to be the only one that had any sign of a zone of inhibition, even if it was small. After this experiment, a new and far stronger candidate would have to be found to find any antibody resistance.
Comments
The faculty supervisor for this project was Jamie Cunningham, Biology.