Fall 2015 Week 5

This week in lab I did a lot of little tasks to maintain my experiments. I made more media (I simultaneously feel that I don't use my media fast enough and that I spend all my time making media), I replanted endophyte infected grass seeds, took some photos off the lab camera and diluted alcohol (though I now realize I should have made more bleach too).

The plates I made last week testing the sterility of different bleach concentrations were over run with contamination as well. All of the plates had the same green/black mold as before, no matter how high the bleach concentration. I'm beginning to feel frustrated.

Next week I plan on using a sterilization technique I found using 75% ethyl-alcohol and 4% bleach solution-way stronger than any I've used before. They say to dip the plant tissue in alcohol, then bleach, then alcohol again. Apparently the second alcohol dip removes some of the bleach residue, which could be one reason my original experiment with 1.25% bleach did not grow anything at longer sterilization times.

Contamination or not?