|
| About ISB |
| Systems Biology |
| Labs Completed |
|
| About the Interns |
| Past Interns |
| Halo Group |
| Bacteriorhodopsin |
| Funky Fremont |
| Educators |
| The first lab we performed this summer was the Salinity Lab. The purpose of the Salinity Lab was to determine how salt concentration changes the growth of Halobacterium cells. Scientists, teachers, and high school interns have developed and optimized this lab over the past three summers, so by completing this lab first, we not only learned background information about Halobacterium, but also we grew comfortable performing standard lab protocols. | ||
|
Briefly, to complete this lab, we incubated 100.0µL of Halobacterium culture in 5.0L of complete medium of varying concentrations. The concentrations of complete medium we tested were: 2.3M, 2.8M, 3.3M, 3.8M, and 4.3M. For each concentration of complete medium, we had one control with no Halobacterium culture, as well as three samples with Halobacterium. After incubating the Halobacterium for 48 hours at 37˚C, we used a spectrophotometer to measure the optical density of each sample. |
|
 |
||
We performed this lab twice, and our results had a small standard deviation. For both trials, the density of the Halobacterium cell growth was greatest in a salinity of 3.3M. This result was consistent with the conclusions of the interns during the summer of 2005. We hypothesized that the cell density is not highest at 4.3M because the Halobacterium is still in the log phase of growth after 48 hours. It would be interesting to repeat this lab, but to incubate the samples for longer than 48 hours. This would allow us to investigate whether the rate of Halobacterium growth is a function of salinity. (--MD) |
||
 |
WWW 2006 Intern Site |