My passion project was called “E.coli experiment” as the name states it was an experiment on E.coli.
Explanation of project:
For the project I decided to grow bacteria and test what food it would grow around. I first swabbed Three different bacteria, Rhodospirillum rubrum, Kocuria rhizophilla, E. coli. Out of the three E. coli grew best so I used it for the rest of the tests. I decided to add six different organic substances into the plates with the E. coli. Garlic, onion, ginger, tomato, banana and a highly processed soup packet. I left it alone for a few days and the growth went well.
The garlic and the onion samples both had small areas surrounding them with no growth. This shows that they potentially have anti-bacterial properties. The banana and tomato both got ignored and had E. coli all over them. The ginger was also covered in E. coli. However, the soup packet had a nice ring of no growth around it. Its most likely the high salt content that killed the E. coli. After my plates had finished growing, I took some pictures, recorded my data and then went to do my interview with a doctor that majored in microbiology.
She explained why some of the plates reacted the way they did and why others had no reaction at all. I went to her lab and got a tour of the place. It was a huge space filled with robots and incubators. Desks full of plates with different samples, there were about 80 staff per shift. The whole process of a sample went like this:
- Sample arrives through a currier to get sorted. (Could be a urine, stool, blood, or other sample.)
- The samples then get plated by either a robot or a human.
- The plates are then sent to an incubator.
- When growth appears on the plate is taken out of the incubator and a MLT looks at it and figures out what has grown.
- The information gets typed out and sent to the doctor. (Takes anywhere from 24-hours to 3-days for the process to finish. It greatly depends on the sample.)
This is the left side of my poster board. It explains what a bacteria is, what fungi is and the difference. There is also a graph of the life cycle of bacteria. at the bottom is a quick talk on the sterilization of the whole process.
To the right is the middle of my poster. This explains my project, how it happened, the results, and my interview.
To the left is the right quarter of my board.