Week #11 Reasonable Writings Regarding Wracked Rhizobia

...As promised, I went back to lab to check on my 3rd transfer and attempt to isolate a Rhizobium colony from my Lima Bean plant, and it had already grown too fast. Matt and I decided to move on, so I put another Petri dish in the fridge and began sacrificing more plants (in the name of science, of course) and managed to find nodules on the following plants:Black-Eyed Pea, Hairy Vetch, and Red Clover. This was a great achievement!

I inoculated plates and left them at room temperature for 24 hours. When I went back to the lab on Wednesday, Matt informed me that there wasn't any growth; so, we decided to risk incubating them like I had previously done with the Lima Beans. This morning when I walked in, Matt was glowing and when he showed me my plates, I was too. I have great samples of colonies in three separate dishes. 

Although they have the proper morphology, I still have to do gram stains and other metabolic tests to confirm that we have Rhizobium; however, we are headed in the right direction. After that, I will test the strains against different antibiotics in my Mueller Hinton plates. 

There is so much more to do after that yet so little time. In fact, I don't even have enough information for the Data, Analysis, and Conclusion sections, to name a few, for my rough draft which is due today; so, I suppose it is going to be really rough. Below are a few pictures of nodules and potential Rhizobia colonies. Hey, don't knock it! They are a boon to organic farmers.