Fall 2015 Week 10

I ran my last sterilization experiment of the semester this week in lab. The grass plates I made weeks ago are as sterile as the day I put them in my cabinet and so I decided to go ahead with the procedure I used on the grass. This was a summary of my procedure:

1. Rinse leaves in running tap water for 5 minutes to remove any debris or dirt
2. Soak leaves in 75% ethanol for 30 seconds
3. Soak leaves in 4% bleach for 5 minutes
4. Soak leaves in 75% ethanol for 30 seconds to rinse any residual bleach from the leaves
5. Cut the leaves in to small squares and put pieces in a petri plate 

This time I varied the times I soaked the silver leaved nightshade leaves in bleach to see if it had any affect. I soaked the leaves in bleach for 5 minutes, 6 minutes, 8 minutes, 10 minutes, and 15 minutes. Things began to grow on most of the plates by Thursday and by today the growth was dense enough to see without squinting. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? I have no clue, Cori has no clue, Matt has no clue. So I'm just going to characterize this fungi for my project. Its everywhere on these plants.

To characterize the fungi I will use their distinctive characteristics when growing on petri plates, lumpy green with white mycelium on the fringes:

What the mycelium looks like stained and put under a microscope:

And what the spores look like under a microscope: 

I will also look up any biochemical tests I could possibly do to narrow the search to a genus of fungi I'm working with.