Blog 22

There are a few things that could have caused error in our experiment.  One is that it is possible that other germs and bacteria other than E. Coli could have gotten into our petri dishes.  This could cause our data to have errors because the other organisms could have altered the antibiotic resistance.  Also because the amount of other organisms that got into the petri dishes could have varied from petri dish to petri dish, the data would not necessarily be uniform.  Another error could be within the E. Coli itself.  It is possible that in some of the samples some of the E. Coli may not have actually been alive.  If one petri dish had more alive E. Coli than another petri dish, the data created may not be completely accurate. Also the agar could not have been the exact same consistencies in every petri dish.  When the agar was poured it may thicken in different areas and have different consistencies when it cooled, which would make every dish not completely uniform which could have an effect on the results.  Another could be the temperature that the E. Coli was living in.  Even if the degree difference was small each day it still could have had an affect on how the E. Coli survived and colonized.

Blog 21

Our experiment tests E. Coli's resistance to antibiotics.  We are trying to figure how quickly it dies depending on how much antibiotic different samples are given.  This research is significant because it can test the effectiveness of antibiotics on certain bacteria.  The research we are doing is similar to those who are trying to find new medicines/antibiotics that can be used to kill the bacteria in our body.  Also one issue doctors have with antibiotics is our body can build up resistance to them if they have been used too many times and are no longer able to fight off the bacteria in the human body.  So by doing this research, we are researching how much the certain type of bacteria, E.Coli, can build up resistance to certain amounts of the antibiotic ampicillin.  We are trying to figure out how much ampicillin it takes to kill off the bacteria and how it can build up resistance to it.  Similar to how if you get the bacteria in your body that creates strept throat and how if you get it enough times and take the antibiotics enough times, the antibiotic no longer is capable of killing off that bacteria in your body because it has built up resistance to it.

Blog 20

So far, our experiment did not go exactly the way we had planned so we do not have any actual data.  We moved colonies that had formed into two different types of petri dishes, one with just agar, and the other with agar as well as ampicillin.  However, there was no visible difference between the two so we could not take any data.  In attempt to fix this issue we added a couple drops of ampicillin to the petri dishes to see if their is any new visible difference in the e.coli colonies.  We are going to check back tomorrow to see how they have formed and see if there was any resistance to the ampicillin created by the e. coli colonies.