Pardon My Absence

I felt bad for not coming in this week for my internship, but I couldn’t find a last minute baby sitter for my children. My oldest had a week off from school for spring break, and the youngest was sort of sick.

On the other hand, I did get a lot done today on the deadline for blogging and discussion board entries. I, also, had time to be ahead of the curve for my microbiology lab assignment known as the “Case Study Report of an Unknown Specimen.” Basically, I got a labeled test tube, marked by the number seven, and received a patient information form and reason for her reason at the hospital before my spring break. Figure 1 shows the patient form, and Figure 2 show the  unknown test tube labeled “7” for further testing.

Figure 1. The case study form was sort of funny because they added that her past medical history stated " a single mother on welfare." Why is it logical to know this information?

Figure 2. The test tube from left to right is the unknown microbe and the other tube is the "Mannitol Fermentation Broth Test." This test shows the by product of it's nutrients that it produced and the color indicator showed that it fermentated acid but no gas in the inner tube "Duram tube."

My job was to identify the unknown microorganism and what measure of antibiotics to kill the pathogen. I performed techniques like inoculation of my unknown microbe to isolation media’s like MacConkey Agar (MAC) or Mannitol Salt Agar (MSA) plates. These types of media allow for selective and differential growth of either gram negative or gram positive groups of bacteria to grow and thrive depending on the media. For example, I inoculated my unknown to MAC media and nothing happened because MAC media is for gram negative bacteria. My conclusion was that my unknown was a gram positive bacteria, and further lab techniques like smear preparation and gram staining gave me a view of my bacteria under the microscope for selecting the correct Dichotomous key. Lastly, the biochemical tests on the key narrowed the identification of the microbe

Figure 3 below shows the final lab for this case study of identifying the right antibiotic to diminish this foreign microbe causing this infection. This plate is called a Mueller Hinton plate with a lawn of Staphylococcus aureus.

Figure 3. Clockwise from the top left corner is a small white disk of antibiotics in the center of the quadrants, respectively: ampicillian 10 micrograms, vancomycin 30 micrograms, erythromycin 15 micrograms, and, lastly, penicillin 10 micrograms.

I’m currently about two weeks ahead, and started writing my report because I began identifying the antibiotic I’m going to use. This assignment is relevant to the STEM program because I will have more time to spend in the internship.

I had help from Matt earlier today on how to approach the modification of my project I plan to continue but with alterations. For instance, the previous project bar graph had unacceptable error bars of my standard deviation. I tweaked with my data by eliminating the outliers in a statistical view. Graph 1 below show the new and improved bar graph with proper error bars.

Graph 1. The error bars are within the bars and I combined first and second attempt objects like the rails and elevators as one bar. I, also, excluded data like zero's and outliers from the data I collected to correct the error bars.

I, also, still plan to sample objects around the campus like the bathroom faucets and their door handles, cafeteria tables, and other possible areas of contact. Instead of sampling twenty objects of classroom desks, etc., I will, unfortunately, sample forty objects to prevent abnormal error bars. I'm still brainstorming on how to approach the antimicrobial of microbes around the campus.