Last post I forgot to mention that Dr. P. gave us a bacteria and had us spread it all over a petri dish. Then he gave us a virus and we wrote our initials in the plate. Today we found this:

So the clear lines in the bacteria is where the virus infected it. This virus is a bacteriophage.

So now back to our unknown H. So we had to redo our acid-fast stain because of missing a step. The results were the same though. It was negative meaning that our bacteria is not a mycobacteria.

The results

Next we did did the endospore stain. This will show us if a few or if many of our bacterial cells have spores.

Again we heated the slide and added stain to it for five minutes then removed. This stain was malachite green.

Once the remaining stain had been washed off a we used safranin and stained it. This time just over the sink.

That was a pretty simple process compared to others don't you think :) 

Results time!

All of the green portions are the spores so our bacteria has quite a few. I think this was one of the coolest pictures yet.

Now it's the end of the week so I'll recap the facts we have on our unknown H bacteria.

1. It is gram positive
2. it has a capsule
3. is not a mycobacteria because of the negative acid-fast stain
4. It has quite a few spores

Well, That all we know so we will have to continue our investigation next week. See you then!