My students and I have just posted a new blog entitled: ”Lab work
experience”, which details an extra curricular training course I ran
for two weeks in summer 2011. This training course proved extremely
successful and we hope to be running similar courses in summer 2012,
which will provide University of Lincoln students with experience
which differentiates them from students at other universities, thus
providing a significant employability advantage in the job market.
Lab Diary
A few pictures from our extensive library…
Liquid Nitrogen 
Disection prep 
We like fire 
The task ahead... 
- The Skeleton in forensics
The Final Day
Today we pippetted out the agar into plastic tubes we autoclaved to maintain a sterile environment and avoid contamination of the bacteria. (WARNING; agar sets quickly-had to make agar again), Second attempt agar once cooled BUT NOT SET we continued to pippete into the plastic tubes. Once the agar was set we could then follow the correct sterile techniques to produce “stabs” into the agar, using the successfully grown streak plates. We correctly labelled each one to identify them according to strain used, and from which culture. These we recorded as successfully grown from the originally stored samples, and stored as “stabs”.
We were disappointed we ran out of time and was unable to produce the glycerol mixture with the samples in the broth. But we want to come back (during term time or a a fuure holiday period) to complete the job.
The remainder of this day was spent finishing off any jobs that we still had to complete, this included the rest of the “stab” cultures and checking the P.acnes plates as well as gram staining some friendly E.coli to confirm thier identity. We also made sure that the technical staff knew exactly what had been completed over the past two weeks and the records were up to date in order for others to carry on after our work.
p.s this is Keiran
Streak Plates and Stab Cultures
Thursday 16th June
The group began the day in the Research Room getting up to date with the blog, updating and finishing off various “bits of blog” that we had started and making sure we had plenty of photographic evidence of all our activities. The blog was an effective way to collect all of our work and discuss any findings as a group. This took up most of the morning on the second to last day of the two week lab work experience.
After a lunch break, Tammy and Sophie continued the work on the E. faecium samples. Their first job was to anxiously check the plates streaked the week before to see if any had successfully produced collonies. They were very pleased to find some did which showed these ones had been successfuly stored, and these streak plates can be used to produce “stab” cultures (obtained by “stabbing” bacterial samples into bottles of agar before storage).
After collecting the successfully grown streak plates form the fridge, they were placed onto the bench and made up the required solutions. More M17 and lactose agar were made to use the following day for “stab” cultures. We also made up some glycerol and M17 broth for freeze-dried samples. Both ways of storage are a good way of preserving the bacteria for use in future progects.
The M17 broth solution was collected and placed into sterile plastic sample tubes, and from each successfuly grown streak plate, a tube was fully labelled with the identity of the particular bacerial sample. Following aseptic techniques using a “flamed” wire loop, a single collony were scraped from the streak plate and scraped onto the inside of the tube containing the broth and mixed. These are to be used for storage by freeze-drying with glycerol later. These bacterial samples were placed in the incubator overnight.
Laura and Gemma sifted through the many years worth of bacterial sample that are stored in the labs. They then prepared stab cultures from these in order for easier storage. This took the best part of the afternoon but their work will be well worth it as these new condensed samples will take up less room and will be accessible for years to come.
And now, dear reader, are Dr Tim Bates’ ever so slightly squished sandwiches. These sandwiches were in no way part of the 2 weeks lab. work experience, but more an amusing (to us) photo opportunity as a result of their being left in his rucksack in close proximity to some research text books:
Meet the Pro Vice Chancellor…
It’s often the way of the world that a new electronic toy will always encounter teething problems, whether it be a new phone or a computer. It’s a learning process, figuring out what all those mysterious buttons do. This is especially true with “The Stig”, the latest piece of equipment to grace one of the laboratories of the University of Lincoln. On Wednesday morning, “The Stig” dug its heels into the ground and refused to cooperate, so it was back to the safety of the microbiology labs, where the technology was slightly more cooperative.
It was a more sedate morning than the one before, where we had been dissecting the various organs of a pig (a.k.a the “glamorous” work). Microbes require time to adapt and grow on their new homes, such as the various agar plates being used for specific organisms, so it was the task for that morning to check how they were growing, if they grew at all, and to plan the next course of action, especially for their storage for future use by other students at another time.
In the afternoon, we were visited by Professor Paul Stewart, who is Pro Vice Chancellor Research and was Founding Head of the new Engineering Hub for the School of Engineering.
http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/engineering/staff/PStewart/p_stewart.htm
He was given a tour of the main microbiology teaching lab whilst Dr. Bates and Dr. Williams explained the work we had been doing, and how it provided us with additional valuable experience that we were unable to obtain elswhere, while we students shuffled around trying to avoid the Professor Stewart’s camera. Unfortunately, pictures were eventually taken…
- Tammy hard at work