Day 8- Lab Day

Today we had a lab day. We went to the lab of Duqusne University. There we met Dr. Stols. Then we got in four groups. Two of the groups worked on the water samples from Murphy's Bottom and the other two worked on the water samples we got from the Kiski River on Wednesday. We were meant to do two experiments. For the first one we had to put some of the water onto four different petri dishes. They all had different chemical substances in them. After some days of waiting bacteria will have grown on the chemical substances. Then we can look which type of bacteria grows best on each of the petri dishes. One of the petri dishes was covered with a substance called LB. LB has got lots of glucose in it. So this chemical substance is especially good for heterotrophs. After that experiment we did another experiment. We wanted to extract the DNA from some of the microbes we found in the Kiski River and at Murphy's Bottom. We had to spin our samples a lot of times and we had to add different substances like lysis buffer or ethanol several times. In the end we had separated the DNA. In between we also listened to three presentations dealing with Climate Change and our Carbon footprint. After listening to the three presentations we calculated our individual carbon footprint. The average of the students would need four worlds if everyone continued to live the way the students live now. After finishing our lab day we had dinner at the University. Then we went to the dorms and blogged. It was another very interesting day.