Overloaded Work

A few days ago, I took out my door handle cultures, and I compared them and quantified the colonies growing. Figure 1 and 2 is the external door handles, and figure 3 and 4 is the internal handles of the 2^nd floor classrooms of the DB building. I’m waiting and planning to gram stain them soon. One of the lab sith lords are pushing me to stain. I won’t say whom. I'm looking forward to it but never have time.

Figure 1. Shows the TSA plates being incubated for 3 days; it was supposed to be for 24 hours.

Figure 2. Shows only six because I swab a public door, so it was excluded from my data for being a public door.

Figure 3. The before shot of potential microbes.

Figure 4. The plate number 14 is excluded because of same reason above, and I just wanted to show the ones that did have something. Number 4 has like a splash of growing cultures instead of circular.

Next week in microbiology is gram staining, microscopy, and smear preparation; my purpose for gram staining is identifying the cell wall of present bacteria growing in my plates. The internship is really giving me some pre-knowledge of the future labs. For instance, the pre-labs are, also, going over the microscopic imaging of the shapes and sizes, and the anaerobic and non-anaerobic that prokaryotic cells need. This will lead to a key of some sort, a bible for identifying bacteria, fungi, and other microbes.

I started a small project and took samples of my mouth, hat, and forehead. How much microorganisms are present in my mouth, hat, and forehead? The results were awesome. The TSA plates lit up with orange dots everywhere. Figure 5-6 show the results of a before and after shot. The mouth swab culture looks like smeared mustard, and the forehead swabbing looks like sprinkled yellow salt grains. Lastly, the hast swab looks like the above sample of the classroom door handles.

Figure 5. Before entering the incubator for 3 days.

Figure 6. Looks like yellow mustard. Can't wait to gram stain this one.

Today, the second target being swabbed is rails. Figure 7-8 shows the type/style and location around the stairwell area. Arbitrary swabbing was made around the DB building of both the south and north stairwells. I, also, registered for the 11^th Annual Student Research Conference; I’m kind of nervous about how I have to present a poster to professional educators. For instance, a vivid picture is standing there with your poster, and many high ranked people poking at me with their questions. Gilbert gave some insight on how their will be people like that. I don’t really like to talk, but it is a weakness I can build on. I look forward to it if accepted to their conference. A new experience will just broaden my skills in speaking to the public. Moreover, I will just have to know what I’m talking about.

Figure 7. There is too much rails to grab when walking up and down stairs.

Figure 8. There was some nasty black stuff on the bottom of each rail. Everyone's fingers are touching it.

Getting Started

                I recognized a few academic colleague faces that made it this year to the program. Since another semester has started, I was, again, accepted to the STEM program of scholars. I look forward to another successful spring 2013 semester this year. I began to give my time to the requirements of the program this week. Unfortunately, I at the moment can’t perform my samples that require the classroom door handles of the DB building because I will interrupt classes in session. Figure 1 below shows the potential classroom door handle being swabbed this week.

Figure 1. The exterior door handle of the DB building 2nd floor classroom. Also, it is the same size, shape, and appearance on the interior of it.

I Hope that before Friday I can begin to start swabbing my first objects on campus, so I can start analyzing the data. During the next few weeks I want to start swabbing rails, then to vendor machine selection buttons, and elevator buttons.  Figures 2, 3, 4, and 5 below show possible targets for swabbing.

           It has been a long break for me from the internship opportunity bestowed onto me since last semester. The focus in mind is still fomites on college campuses. My past blogs didn’t include any of the research I’ve been conducting, so I have copied and paste my abstract below in bold and border around it. Furthermore, my procedure has had many revisions, and beneath the abstract are the procedure/materials.

Fomite Bacteria on High Touch Objects on a College Campus

The spread of fomite bacteria is of major concern on college campuses due, in part, to the lack of information and potential for germ distribution. High touch objects such as elevator buttons, vending machine buttons, stair rails, door handles, smartphones, keyboards, classroom tables, and other objects, are potential areas of germ spread. In this study, bacteria and other microbes were quantified from these high interaction objects. Bacteria were obtained by swabbing and culturing swabs on TSA media. Colony forming units were quantified from the TSA plates for each surface sampled. It is expected that locations with the highest amount of microbes will be smartphones and vending machines. In contrast, external door handles are expected to have fewer bacterium.

Method/Materials

1.      Prepared 20 sterilized test tubes (16x100).

2.      Identified 20 objects on campus (men bathroom toilet handles, vending machine buttons, structure door handles) being swab for the experiment.

Wet swab run

1.      Dipped swab in Peptone, and swab each surface with 0.1% Peptone.

2.      Swab objects 20cm across in a vertical or horizontal line. (Depending on surface area)

a.      Slight rotation of swab on contact with surface.

b.      External handles are shorter area surface.

3.      Swab tip was broken off in test tube.

4.      Label 20 TSA plate accordingly to location and object/surface being targeted.

5.      Inoculated swab samples to TSA plates directly for culturing bacteria. Note: Practice aseptic techniques.

3.      Incubate all 20 TSA plates for 24 hours at 37°C in room 104. Note: correctly positioned for storage.

4.      Quantified colony forming units by counting.