Week 14

This is the last blog post for this semester! I cant believe how fast it went! I'm looking forward to the break. Now all I have to do is get through the week from hell and it will be smooth sailing from there. 

This week in lab I worked on my poster some more. It looks like I've finally got it done. Its nice to have that marked off the list. Now all I need to worry about is what I'm going to say to the judges when they walk by. To be honest I'm more worried about the fifteen minute oral presentation I have to give the same day about Happiness in Animals. I should have said no to the coordinators when they asked me to do the second one.  Oh well. Keep on trucking. 

Here is a photo of one of the flowers in my garden because they make me happy

Week 13

Nine hours a week seems like so few sometimes. I often feel the week has flown by and little progress is being made. Then, surprisingly, we're at the end of the semester, I have at least some results, my poster is nearly done and finals are just around the corner. Its surreal that life moves forward in these little bursts of activity. 

Anyway this week in lab I worked on my poster for the Estrella Mountain Conference that is rapidly approaching. It seems to be coming together quite well. It took awhile to find a layout that I liked but once I did it has been smooth sailing. I have plenty of photos, some contributed by other stem scholars (thanks Amanda Goodson!), and I really feel like its looking good. Other than a graph or table to visually represent the scant results that I do have my poster is pretty much complete. Data analysis does not appear to be one of my strong suits but luckily that's Matt's forte. 

Here is a photo of some of the flowers I have been testing around campus:

Week 12

This week in lab we got our Estrella Mountain proposal results back. As far as I'm aware nearly everyone got accepted. Congrats everyone! Now we have to remember the the original purpose of our research, build a poster and tell a room full of people about it as if we actually know what is going on. All without having had enough time to generate any actual results. To be completely honest this all seems a little like a farce. 

For me personally this will be even more ludicrous as my English class also made me put in a proposal and that one was accepted too. I feel like I'm going to be running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to explain things I don't understand to people who know just barely less than I do. Is this what science always feels like? 

Cory and I talked and she made me see that this stuff is good practice for my real life. It can only get easier as I get more practice with these kinds of things. I really appreciated the new view point :) 

Here is a picture of an ornate tree lizard that my cat killed. This is the same speices we use to have in our little lizard cage in lab. You can tell from the blue belly strips that it was a male.

Week 11

Just so everyone knows I title my posts so boringly because it helps me keep tract of where we are in the semester. Now I've realized that we started blogging a few weeks after the semester started so I'm lost again. All I know is that its all coming to an end pretty soon here. Thanks the gods.

This week in lab I've done more of the same. I redid my original experiment. So mostly this week I made agar, added antibiotics, sterilized plant tissues and put them on my agar plates. This way I can show that my original results were not just a fluke and perhaps even be able to isolate a few more species of endophytes. 

This week I was also given a gift of a spectrophotometer. Its really old, probably from the 60's or so and I cant seem to get it to work. The light goes on but the dial doesn't register anything. I figured the % absorbance was being measured so I added food coloring to a vial but nothing changed. Does anyone know an old professor who might be able to fix my cool new toy?

Week 10

This week in lab I mostly looked for endophytes in various different plant species. Matt and Josh helped a lot. Matt went out out gathered different kinds of desert plants and all three of us sat around attempting to find endophytes in their tissues. We found a few in mesquite and the endophyte infused grasses that I planted earlier in the semester. It took forever but Josh was finally able to get a few pictures with the ipad. This is an art that requires finesse and patience. 

I also decided to rerun my orginal experiment to see if the results are the same. I sterilized and plated oleander tissues first because most of my suspected endophytes came from oleander. Next week I'll get the other two species on my list done. 

I believe this is a grass blade. You can see the fungal hyphae coming out of the plnt tissue here:  

Week 9 (according to Canvas)

I find it difficult to keep track of the weeks as time marches on. I guess if its week 9 then we are axactly half way through the semester. Now we all just have to hold on, bear down and get throught the last half. I'm pulling for you all. 

This week in lab I felt like I was really productive until earlier today. I finally finished and turned in my abstract for the Estrella Mountain Conference, attempted to isolate some of the fungal colonies that may be endophytes on my other plates and made more agar. 

However today I realized that the water I used to dilute the antibiotic in my agar was not sterile (because I forgot and used regular DI water) which means every single one of the plates I made is also contaminated. This puts me behind in a major way so I'm rather upset with myself. 

This week I also learned to melt paraffin wax and pour it into the microtome. Paraffin is stronger than the potato I was using before and has less contaminates. I made some beautifully thin specimens that were a joy to look at under the microscope. Josh found a strange structure in the oleander stems that almost looked like a corkscrew. Matt identified it as a ligated xylem vesicle used for conducting water. Or something. 

WEEK 7

This week in lab was very colorful. The mold gardens I made last week grew spectacular fungal colonies. The rainbow of species is so awe inspiring I haven't identified any. Some look like little green hills with white, crystalline hyphea snow frosting the tops. There are black slime molds with lightning bolts of hypea diving deep into the agar for nutrients. See its stunning: 

Ok so maybe you have to see it close up. I think its pretty. 

Anyway this week I also noticed a white slow-growing fungi on some of the oleander stems. An endophyte needs a minnimum of two weeks to appear so the timing is perfect. Here is a photo Amanda took for me using her phone: Thanks Amanda!

I still don't really know how to identify fungi so I have no clue what kind this may be. I just really hope nothing grows over break.