{"id":8,"date":"2006-12-12T22:42:53","date_gmt":"2006-12-13T04:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/?p=8"},"modified":"2006-12-12T22:47:15","modified_gmt":"2006-12-13T04:47:15","slug":"where-was-i-episode-3-now-updated-with-lots-more-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bigroom.org\/wordpress\/?p=8","title":{"rendered":"“Where Was I”, episode 3 (Now Updated with Lots More Stuff!)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where Was I, Episode 3 – “It’s a Small World After All”<\/span> (now updated!)<\/p>\n

Study is sucking up most of my time, but that doesn’t mean I never go anywhere any more. Recently, I went to the “Edson Fichter Nature Area”.<\/p>\n

\"Entrance
\nYeah, that place. But look closer.<\/div>\n
\"Marker
\nNo, no, I mean go inside<\/em> and look closer. Down there, by the river.<\/div>\n

\"Down
\nNo, no, go closer<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"A
\nCLOSER!!!<\/span>
\n\"Microbes!\"<\/p>\n

There, that’s<\/em> a closer look. Incidentally, as you can see, the trick of setting the camera for close-up photos and sticking the little lens opening into the eyepiece of a microscope actually does work. Conceivably, then, the same trick ought to work with any kind of scope, which I’ll have to keep in mind for the next time we go to visit the Bruneau Observatory. But I digress…<\/div>\n
\"long \"Some
<\/center>I have no idea what all these neat-looking funky things are. Well, not besides the fact that they’re little animalcules<\/abbr> with cilia<\/abbr> and stuff swimming around and that they’re pretty big as far as microbes go.See, I’m not really into eukaryotes.<\/abbr> Needlessly complicated, I say. I’m interested in the cool<\/em> stuff. Useful<\/em> stuff.<\/p>\n

No ponderous huge protozoans for me, I’m hunting Our Friends, the Bacteria.<\/p>\n

See them in there? No, no, you have to look even closer. What do you mean you still can’t see them?<\/p>\n

\"Pretty<\/center><\/div>\n
\"SameAll right then, here, let me dry the sample out and heat fix<\/abbr> it, then I’ll Gram Stain<\/abbr> them for you.Wow. I guess soft, wet, squishy protozoal cell membranes don’t like being heat-fixed, do they? Ouch.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure how much of that is bacteria and how much of that is exploded protozoan guts.<\/p>\n

Let me look around elsewhere on the slide…<\/p>\n

\"Ghostly,Okay, technically at least some of these things are diatoms<\/abbr> rather than “protozoa<\/abbr>“.<\/p>\n

Kinda neat and creepy at the same time, ain’t it?<\/p>\n

Okay, enough staring at hollow shells of dead things, let me see if I can find some bacteria…<\/p>\n

\"ah,Now, months later, I’m still<\/em> not sure how much of the debris on those original slides was bacteria and how much was just crud from the samples. I did, however, get pictures of the 10 isolates that I wanted to try to identify (and of which, as you know from my entry on Willy Bacillus<\/a>, I so far only know one…)<\/p>\n

Of the variety of isolates we got, I pulled out seven that showed some degree of fluorescence under my homebrew UV-LED flashlight<\/span>, one that was growing in media containing 10mM<\/span> of a zinc salt, one that was growing in scalding-hot conditions (55?C – which is about the temperature that “melts” collagen into gelatin and makes that tough stew-meat moist and tender), and of course, Willy Bacillus who grew in 10% salt.<\/p>\n

Pyotr, Paul, Olga, Ursula, Peggy, Penny, and Ada (the fluorescent bacteria) and Castor (the zinc-tolerant bacterium) all looked more or less like this when I gram-stained them:
\n\"Peggy\"Penny
\nI think the Gram-biguous<\/span> effect is more because of my technique than the bacteria. I believe<\/em> these are all probably really gram-negative.<\/p>\n

There’s a portrait of Willy Bacillus in the other post. Horace was the other interesting-looking culture:
\n\"Horace
\nI’m not sure what’s causing the funny spore-like spots or the bulging of the cells. It might be normal, or it might be an effect of the heat-fixing or being in the “cold” (room temperature) or something. I’d be interested to find out what it is.<\/p>\n

More fun facts:<\/p>\n