And Our Unknown Bacteria is......

I can't believe it!! Today we worked out what our bacteria is. It's so hard to believe that the semester is almost over. I'll tell you what unknown H is a little later.

As we looked at our antibiotic results we had to measure the radius around the disk to see how well that particular antibiotic worked against our unknown bacteria. Once we know the radius then you get the diameter. With the diameter we looked at a list of diameters for the antibiotics to see how far away the bacterial growth had to be in order for the bacteria to be considered effected by it. 

The most effective against bacterial growth was Erythromycin, Penicillin, and Novobiocin. This would mean that we would probably give penicillin as a first choice drug and it would attack the cell wall. If our patient was allergic though to Penicillin and the other semi-synthetic product then we would like to give either Erythromycin which attacks the function of the ribosomes within the cell or Novobiocin which attacks the nucleic acid synthesis. 

Next we tried to figure out this mysterious bacteria. Dr. P. had us do our gram staining again because we were really unsure if the bacteria was positive of negative. This time he said our stain was beautiful!! And we confirmed that our sample is gram-positive cocci! 

Sorry, I don't have a better picture. Anyway, after following many charts we came up with the name of our bacteria. And the name is...

**dramatic music**

MICROCOCCUS LUTEUS

We were both really happy to get it right. It took lots of help from Dr. P. but we made it!

The yogurt Dr. P. made was also done. The kind in which he boiled the milk first tasted the best.

The blue marked cup is the non-heated milk and the red is the heated milk

Next week is Thanksgiving so we can't run any test on Tuesday. I think we are going to watch a video for lab. I can't wait for break!! 

HAPPY

THANKSGIVING!!