Krista Meserve ’18 – The bug or the windshield?

Posted on Feb 23 by

Something that I learned recently was that there is always growth! This is a picture of a control plate in which no growth of E.coli was expected. After allowing to incubate overnight, there appeared to be colonies. I learned that this is due to non-sterile conditions, as there is no way in our lab setting to be perfectly sterile. Contaminants in the air unavoidably adhered on the plate in the time it took to pipette the control sample onto it and caused the small amount of growth seen here. I think this is interesting because it demonstrates how small, unnoticeable particles can make such a difference in your results! So, sometimes you’re the bug and sometimes you’re the windshield. I think this statement has been relevant in these past weeks. In trying to sequence the strands of DNA, there have been some unforeseen results that we have had to work around. In those instances we were the bug. When it is determined what went wrong and we are able to continue with the sequencing, we will again be the...