MYSTERY TSA PLATE by Thinh Phu Pham

Hi everyone, this is my first individual blog post. For this first time, I introduce you to an experiment, which is growing bacteria and examine them. To me, it is the number one experiment I want to do most in my life. 

Day 0:

On the first day of experiment, I collected specimens which were on my glasses, my laptop keyboard, my phone surface and my leg. They are where I contact everyday. I got the idea to take the specimen on my leg because in the lecture, I was quite interested in Staphylococcus aureus and S. hominin. Rather than that I heard that laptop keyboard and phone surface can have a huge amount of bacteria. Last but not least, glasses can be a possible place for bacteria, so I thought why don't I try out. All the specimens were spread on TSA plate. The experiment was tested on two different temperatures, which were at room temperature and 37^oC. As you can see two pictures above, they represent for my plate after having specimen but before incubation. 

Day 2: 

After two days, the bacteria on the plate were incubated at 37^oC quite reproduced. On the other hand, the bacteria on the room temperature plate did not have any action, they left the plate as the same as Day 0, I was quite surprised that they did not reproduce. Back to the other plate, when I counted the number of colonies on the glasses area were 7, 5 colonies for laptop keyboard and about 80 several sized colonies for leg, especially only 1 for my phone. I couldn't believe that my phone could be that clean. I was quite amazed myself. We continued incubated for one more week to see if there any difference.

Day 7:

After one week from Day 0, the bacteria on room temperature plate were quite reacting a bit, only 20 colonies were found on the leg area. The other area seemed not react at all. Back to the stunning 37^oC plate,  the colonies became fatter, bigger that before and the number of colonies was decreased because small colonies now became bigger and wider colonies. One of them had a specific yellow color. All others had nature yellowish white color. In general, all of the colonies even big or small on both plates were circular. 

I tried to look at them by spreading on a slide and looking under microscope, but I could find anything. The bacteria may be too small to observe. For which bacteria existed on leg, my guess was Staphylococcus aureus or S. hominin. And I still have no idea for which bacteria existed on my laptop keyboard and my glasses. 

Final thoughts:

I think this experiment is very interesting, maybe because I want to grow bacteria. However, it still has some difficulties in finding which the bacteria are. From my observation, the bacteria quite actively reproduce at body temperature rather than room temperature. One last thing, I still can't believe my phone surface could be that clean.