Team:Newcastle/Notebook/Lab

Lab Book

20/06/16

After the interlab study, we made streak plates from the colonies we had grown. We regrew all the samples on LB agar with 1 in 1000 dilution of Chloramphenicol. We did this to isolate a pure strain of the transformed interlab E. coli, therefore allowing us to grow up a new, genetically-identical plate. Our lab supervisor, Matthew Peake, showed us the correct streaking technique as the Computer Science students had not learnt this technique before.

22/06/16

After analysing the trial interlab results, we decided to re-plate up the positive control to ensure that we would have enough colonies to carry out the interlab study again.

28/06/16

Today we made a microbial fuel cell by following the Reading University’s protocol, see below.

We sourced the material such as the neoprene gaskets, carbon fibre electrode material, cation-exchange membrane, J-cloth from Professor Ian Head, Dr. Ed Milner and Paniz Izadi from the School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences. We also sourced electric wires with crocodile clips and a multimeter from the Engineering Departments.

First, we prepared the 1M glucose solution, 0.02M potassium hexacyanoferrate (III) solution, 10mM methylene blue solution, these were made up in a 0.1M potassium phosphate buffer.