Help with microbiology assignment

aine90

Hey, i'm in second year of a biology course in college and i could do with some help on a microbiology mini project. One of the options is to draw a picture using bacteria. i really like this idea but i need to get some ideas for different colours of bacteria (on an agar plate, not under the microscope). ANY help will be appreciated. Thanks

I'm in second year too so I can't be of much help to you. You said it has to be on an agar plate, but do you mean a regular nutrient agar plate or could you use something with a differential medium, to colour different bacteria clearly?

CHROMagar is expensive but something along the same lines could be very effective. Alternatively there may be dyes you could flood the plate with to enhance colour. Or a mannitol salt agar plate could be used with S. aureus to great effect for something like a sunrise. The plus side is you could probably source the bacteria for this from your own body or someone else in the lab. If you could get your hands on bacteria with different colour fluorescing proteins that could be really cool, but probably not possible in a second year situation. We were shown an example of a plate with bacteria on it this year, with a pattern in the plate when seen under UV due to some of the bacteria having GFP and some not.

Ronanc1

As true or false said Staph A. on Mannitol agar will get you some good colours, labs are unlikely to have ChromAgar, but there should be a whole host of other possibilities, heres some off the top of my head:

- Micrococcus the genera often are naturally pigmented, the micro lab should certainly have some of them
http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/images/4/4c/Micrococci_color_colonies.jpg

-Staph A. again on Baird parker medium will give you shiny black

-Beta haemolytic Lancefield streps will give you an interesting clearing on blood agar or alternatively a green hue with strep viridans

- Strep species grown on bile aesculin agar will give interesting clearing also

-B. cereus selective agar

-coryne on tinsdale also black

-listeria oxoid medium

-Enterobacter on HE agar turns orange

-yersinia on CIN agar produces bullseye colonies

-Salmonella brilliant green agar colonies range from white to pink

-Xylose-Lysine-Desoxycholate medium Salmonella produce red colonies with black center

-Bruscella species grow on mediums with basic dyes such as fuschin

-M. catarhallis with butyrate will produce bluey green

The list is endless and you could also use techniques such as camp to draw on blood agar