Day 15

Decided that over the last two weeks I've spent more time either looking for my supervisor, or waiting for him, than I actually spent on my project and the extra salmonella assignment put together. So from now on he can find me (this should be fun).

Was streaking plates out today in Bacteriology, and it has to be the most boring job on the face of the earth. When the swabs come in, I culture them overnight in tetrathionate broth. The mixture is activated by adding iodine to it, then the swabs are placed in the broth and broken off and the container sealed. Tetrathionate is supposed to supress other types of bacteria and only let Salmonella and a few select others grow. Unfortunately, some of the few select others also happen to look very much like Salmonella on an agar plate.

After being incubated overnight, I then innoculate the broth onto two different types of agar plate and streak them out. This part is the most monotonous, with two plates per sample and having to flame my wire loop after every stroke - argh!!!

The plates are incubated overnight and then anything that remotely resembles Salmonella the following morning is stuck into urea broth. The urea broth is yellow and should go pink if Salmonella isn't there - but stays yellow if it is.

Any yellow tubes are further cultured onto TSI agar, which should go black if Salmonella is present. All in all, it takes about a week to actually make a positive identification using the agglutination technique!!

I've decided that while this is an invaluable experience for me, I don't think I'll be a Bacteriologist when I graduate.