Week #12 4/19-4/25

I cannot believe yet another week has gone by. We are approaching the homestretch and I am on a runner's high. I literally have had to carry around a note card which lists all of my responsibilities in life, day by day, and sometimes, even hour by hour. This last week has been a whirlwind of excitement and hard work as I have been preparing for two different conferences. 

On Monday of next week, I will be presenting an Honor's project at Rio Salado. I am really excited about it and am quite impressed with  my poster; if I do say so myself. I can only hope that I transfer that pride and hard workmanship into my Estrella Mountain poster. I have the basic outline finished and also have compiled all of my data and pictures. 

Now, I just have to put everything in a logical flowing manner and before you know it: voila, another poster and conference under our belts. I am really excited about both conferences and cannot express how much being an intern has positively affected me this semester; not only on an academic level but also on a personal one. Don't worry, I am not signing off yet, as my project is only in the beginning stages and I hope to have the opportunity to continue  my work next semester; but it has been really great getting to know my fellow interns. 

With that said, I have my results from last week. If you remember I had some control antibiotics to test, but I also had a chance to test Creosote, Four-wing salt bush, and another species of Mesquite. Although Four-wing salt bush (Atriplex canescens couldn't hold its own, Creosote (Larrea tridentata) and Velvet Mesquite (Prosopis velutina) both showed zones of inhibition against Escherichia coli and Staphlycoccus aureus. Look at these magnificent beauties below:

Velvet Mesquite had a 15 mm zone on Escherichia coli and an 18 mm zone on Staphylococcus aureus

 

Creosote had a 10 mm zone on Escherichia coli and a 20 mm zone on

 Staphylococcus aureus 

With these last two samples, we have about 13 different specimens to present at the conference. Keep in mind, my latest protocol takes about a week each time I test a new plant. This includes time for drying the plant, grinding it up, letting it soak in a 70% ethanol solution for about 24 hours, centrifuging them, and then applying them to Kirby Bauer discs over the course of a 48 hour period and then incubating them onto a lawn culture and observing the results 24 hours later. Wow, I am exhausted just writing about all of this.