College Botany Experiment - Fungal/Bacterial Growth in an Incubator

greenfamilyfarms

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My college Botany instructor gave each of us a culture to collect fungi spores and/or bacteria to grow until our next class on Thurday, Nov. 12. Immediately my thought was to make this chicken related. After thinking for a minute, I have decided to incubate my culture dish in my Little Giant stryofoam incubator for the week.

The incubator is set at 99.4* as of 6:45 pm Nov. 5, 2009. It has been cleaned, but not detailed. I have included a picture of my incubator. Please note that it was kept in my Grandpa's shop for several years and has grease stains on the outside. It has a brand new thermostat (the new-fangled kind, not a wafer) and is in great working order considering that is 12 years old. Here is a picture of the culture medium before being placed in the incubator:

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PDA Culture (Potato Dextrose Sugar - common medium for cultivating fungi)

6809_incubation_botany_project_001.jpg

Old Trusty (For those curious - 1 cord is for power, 1 cord is for a computer fan used to convert it to a forced air.)

The lid will be taken off of the dish in the incubator and allowed to sit uncovered for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, the lid will be placed back on the dish and will be sealed with lab film. It will be left undisturbed for the duration of the project. I will be taking time elapse photos (at least twice during this experiment) to see what was in my incubator. Keep checking back for updates.
 
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This will be very interesting project!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We would love to know about our syro incubators vs metal incubators!
 
How funny! I am doing the same exact thing for Microbiology! I got out an old incubator we bought as a back-up probably like 7-8 years ago (it had never been used though). I have had it running for about two months now and it has held the temp. perfectly. It is working great for my cultures. I feel so sorry for the students that don't have an actual incubator.
 
FYI- I don't know if you need test tube racks, but I made one from one of the sections of an egg turning tray. I cut a shoebox in half and bascially made a cardboard frame for the section of the turner. It has been so convenient! The openings in the turner are just the right size. With this set-up, I have been able to do several experiments at one time. A huge time saver!
 
Towards the beginning of this year my class did an experiment using an LG and tested hand sanitizers. Using a control with no sanitizer and one with sanitizer and a sample of the same bacteria in each one,,, out of 11 samples 10 grew bacteria better on the sanitizer than in the one without.
 
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