So its the start of week 5 here and we are on the second week of tests on our unknown bacteria H. This is where we stand. We know that our bacteria is gram positive and that it has endospores. Today we tested to see if it is a mycobacteria which is a much smaller bacteria. To find this out we used an acid fast stain. Here's how we did it.
First we started with fixing the bacteria on the slide so that we didn't lose it during the staining process. Then we put the slide over a beaker of boiling water. A small piece of paper was put on the sample and saturated with Ziehl-Neelsen carbolfuchsin.
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| The fixed sample |
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| First stain |
Once that stain had been on there for 4 minutes we removed the slide from over the beaker, through away the paper, and let the slide cool. Then after rinsing the excess stain off, we decolorized it with acid alcohol and rinsed it again immediately. Its not as interesting to read about but it was really fun and cool in lab I promise!!
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| Acid!! |
Finally the last stain methylene blue is added.
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| The action shot |
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| methylene blue |
Now for the best part. The results!! This is what it looked like:
Now, after lab I realized that we had missed a step in the staining process. While the slide was over the beaker we were suppose to continue to add the stain so that the paper never dried out. Well.....we didn't do that. So even though these results look to be negative for mycobacteria, we need to do it again just to make sure.
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