For our project, we are looking into the small world of microbes! Specifically, microbe interaction with western sword ferns, or Polystichum munitum if we're trying to sound fancy.
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| Polystichum munitum |
Our main goal is to sample the soil near the roots of these sword ferns at various locations, and analyze the bacteria that grows in them. We are hoping to find one or two bacteria that grows in all the soil we sampled. We hypothesize that this bacteria will be one that is helpful to the growth of the plant, perhaps some sort of rhizobacteria which is a bacteria that forms mutually beneficial relationships to the roots of plants and performs important processes like nitrogen fixation. Our plan is to eventually extract DNA from the one or two bacteria common to all samples, PCR it for amplification, then ship it out to get sequenced so we can identify them.
We started our experiment quite a bit earlier than other groups, not because we knew what we were doing (we're still pretty confused... shhh), but because our experiment needs a lot of time for growing bacteria. What we've managed to do is collect 3 samples at 3 locations for a total of 9 samples. Our 3 locations were Gold Park, Pine Ridge Park, and Lynndale Park. We decided to grow our bacteria samples at 2 different temperatures: room temperature and 4C, which meant we had a whopping total of 18 TSA plates. It smelled just lovely.
The plates have already grown, but we're keeping the results a mystery until our next post. Oh, the SUSPENSE!
While you're on the edge of your seat waiting for our next post, have a watch of this video of us out collecting samples on our first day:
While you're on the edge of your seat waiting for our next post, have a watch of this video of us out collecting samples on our first day:
UPDATE: Just realized you can't fullscreen this video so here's a link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzFsia6tXjD0empFY0VCNm1ZV3M/view
Did you guys have pieces of roots in your samples too? I would think that there would be some bacteria clinging to the roots for gas exchange purposes that could be washed off when you made your soil samples in the lab. I'm looking forward to your guys' next post and the results!
ReplyDeleteDid you guys have pieces of roots in your samples too? I would think that there would be some bacteria clinging to the roots for gas exchange purposes that could be washed off when you made your soil samples in the lab. I'm looking forward to your guys' next post and the results!
ReplyDeleteWe did get some roots in some samples. We put our samples into sterile water when we were collect them. Then we used a cotton swab to get the bacteria for inoculation like how we did with our mystery TSA plates. I'm sure the bacteria from the roots grew on our plates. There was A LOT of growth even after a couple days.
DeleteThat's kind a cool project. I'm pretty exciting to see how you guys can take the samples and then process the experiment. I know this one could be quite complicated but I think you guys could work out. I'm waiting to see your results and if you have some problems just share it for us to know, maybe it will be pretty interesting for next year experiment.
ReplyDeleteHey guys!
ReplyDeleteI thought the idea of this project was really good! This is a very interesting field to me, but I was too intimidated by this idea to test it in the ecology research project; so kudos to you! I liked how you tested local park, and although you are keeping the results secret for now, I think that it will be very interesting to see the difference in bacteria between the different parks! Very interesting ecology research project!
I thought I'd leave a comment since I got to review your poster today! Its cool to see how your project progressed over the last couple of weeks and to see that you were able to successfully sequence the bacterias DNA and identify the species. Like I said to you guys today I thought your project was an interesting idea and different from many of the other projects!
ReplyDelete