Week #7 Short, Sweet, And With An Assist; Not The Week...ME OF COURSE...

Since I lost my first two rounds of plants due to the microenvironment present in the incubator, I have to pay frequent attention to my future plantings lest I repeat the same mess. Consequently, I won't be able to start another round until after Spring Break. This week, in the meantime, I decided to further revise my abstract, complete my blogs and discussion board, and reach out to see if any other S-Stemmers could use my help.

Luckily, I stumbled upon Amanda and Tony working on an Algae project gone wrong in 106. Tony gives me too much credit in his blog, but I appreciate the compliments and I really enjoyed working with him on his project. As far as Amanda and I are concerned, we function like hydrogen gas, or as two electrons would in a non polar covalent bond if that suits your fancy :)

After a quick debriefing from Tony and Amanda on their progress and where we were taking their ideas, I took a sample from the aquarium with the alleged bacterial growth and plated it. Through brainstorming, research, and consulting with Matt and Josh, the three of us started narrowing down potential causes of the untimely death of his algae and what we could expect from the plates. After 24 hours, however, there wasn't any growth on the plates.

Since Tony's trip took him so close to the ocean I suggested that we might be dealing with an anaerobe based on an assumption that he may have picked up a halophilic phototrophic bacteria.Keep in mind, this was a just an educated guess and random variable because we expected growth on the plates. Consequently, I then put the plates in a candle jar and by the next day, we had something very mysterious waiting for us in the lab. I am not in the lab today, but I am sure Amanda and Tony are continuing their quest in discovering what we are dealing with.

In closing, I just wanted to express how it wasn't anyone's single contribution that made this happen. On the contrary, it was a collaborative effort which would not have worked otherwise. Tony's devastation transformed into delight as we tackled the problem together. I felt like I was in an electron cloud and the energy the three of us created by constantly bouncing off one another made my time in the lab this week well worth it. In a way, I guess you could say, we were the PERFECT STORM (Actually, that's  my nickname) Science at its best! Thanks guys!

Of course, like always, we sang Happy Birthday!

Amanda said "Give me your best Vanna White!" Ahem, Why Vanna?

This is what we found after 24 hours in the candle jar. Can you see the spikes? Run!