WE GOT COLONIES!
It was 6:10 AM on July 16th. After reautoclaving our chemostat seven times, switching our antibiotic (our original antibiotic gentamicin was faulty), and incubating our plates for 12+ hours, we finally got colonies! Now, we have to prepare our samples for sequencing.
This all started the day before: July 15th.
This morning, I finally mustered up all my strength to get out of bed at 7:20, 35 minutes after my first alarm… it doesn’t matter how early I go to sleep, I never wake up when my alarm goes off. I headed over to breakfast with a few of my friends.
Breakfast was average: nothing too special, but it was still satisfying. At about 8:10, it was time to head to Foster Hall, where lab and lecture are held.
It is always super hot and dry, but since we are in the lab everyday, we unfortunately have to wear long pants.
I walked into lab this morning to see that my waste bottle was overflowing. Waste from our vials in our chemostat was quite literally dripping out onto the table. The stench of the waste is indescribable. We were luckily able to pour it out and all was good. We were praying that this round would be successful and we would have resistant bacteria.
We all headed to the lecture room in the basement and worked on our introductions for a while. We made some progress. Not really too much though. We were occupied with monitoring our chemostat on replifactory, the website we had been using to monitor all the data our chemostat was measuring. Soon, it was time to go back to the lab to check on our chemostats. Many other groups began with testing their bacteria to see if they had become resistant. They did this by streaking them on an antibiotic plate to see if the bacteria would still grow. However, since we had just started our experiment less than 3 days ago, we couldn’t do that yet. Our bacteria weren’t ready. So instead of doing that, we were working hard on our introduction… and working on some typing. Recently, our entire program has begun to see how fast people can type (shoutout monkeytype).
Finally, it was time for lunch, so we all headed back to the cafeteria. After a nice lunch (that I forgot to take a picture of), I walked out to see a skunk right outside the window.
Skunks are everywhere here. Going back to the dorms at the end of the night, it is almost inevitable to see at least one.
Soon, we were all back in the lab for the rest of the afternoon. We began with gDNA extraction (using another lab group’s culture).
While we were adding various buffers to the DNA and centrifuging, we were delivered the amazing news that we didn’t have any problem sets (psets) for the night and everyone jumped and screamed with joy.
After a few hours of extracting DNA, my lab group (Angelina, Vageesh, and I) began to work on plating our cultures from our vials. The process was pretty long, but it was actually a lot of fun (other than the part where I stabbed myself)! Don’t worry, I did not inoculate myself with bacteria. The wound is already closed up.
We were the last lab group to leave the lab for dinner, but at least we finished streaking all of our plates! Now, all we had to do was pray that colonies would grow — this would mean that our bacteria was resistant.
My dinner table: me, Delilah, Vicky, and Mr. Steinman (left to right)
Right after dinner, we headed right back to lab. As you can tell, we spend A LOT of time in the lab. Angelina, Vageesh, and I had to replace our media bottle and drug bottle for our chemostat. Honestly, this was unnecessary since we had already taken our samples, but we couldn’t just leave our vials with no media or drug.
By this time, we were beginning to realize that we wouldn’t be able to send our sequences tomorrow if we started the day at our regular hours, so we made a plan! Assuming our bacteria was resistant, we, along with the Streakers (Sierra, Arthur, and Hiram), convinced our advisor/TA Ms. Ceilidh to let us come to the lab at 6 AM the next morning (7/16) to pick colonies off our plates and as you know, THEY GREW.
