Ambulance bacteria cultures

Aidey

Aidey

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I gave myself an idea in the other thread. A science fair petri dish set isn't all that expensive, and cultures aren't hard to do.

Does anyone think testing an amb would be a worthwhile experiment? Would you guys be interested in the results? If you posted the results where you work do you think the results would change how people clean?
 
I tried it when I did microbio lab class during undergrad when I basically had unfettered access to the various supplies. It was an absolute pain in the butt to isolate anything because 24 hours of incubation almost always produced a lawn instead of streaks. By the time I got streaks out of it I was just out of time and needed to study for the final.
 
In my case I would just be assessing the amount of bacteria growth, not the type, so would having a lawn vs streaks matter?

I was thinking taking pictures at 24, 72 and 144 hours and seeing what got the yuckiest the fastest.
 
I have thought about it, as I am in micro this semester. Professor said no too much liability. I am curious to see results. I wanted to see colony counts as well as isolation. It would be cool though.
 
In my case, I was actually trying to isolate and identify, so having streaks allows to isolate individual colonies unlike lawns, and then I could do the various tests (e.g. gram staining, differential or selective media, etc). Also, if you're trying to quantify, streaks are probably better (it's been years since I did it). Given enough time, any media can produce a lawn, even if it came from a single cell. If you want to quantify how much bacteria, you want to count the number of colonies formed from a swab, not how quickly a lawn forms.
 
Aidey said:
I gave myself an idea in the other thread. A science fair petri dish set isn't all that expensive, and cultures aren't hard to do.

Does anyone think testing an amb would be a worthwhile experiment? Would you guys be interested in the results? If you posted the results where you work do you think the results would change how people clean?
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Ewwwww! Sounds like something that'll cause a few new cases of OCD! :D
 
Actually will not change the cleaning habits of most.
 
My son just submitted a proposal to something almost identical to this for his science fair project. We have two ambulances. He will clean one regularly with a cleaning protocol (unspecified right now) and the other will essentially be the control.

There are quite a few rules to follow for a project like this that is sampling "unknown" bacteria/viri/fungus/etc. Petri dishes must be immediately sealed and not re-opened unless they are transported to a BSL-2 lab. They must be incubated and stored in a secondary container (like a sealed zip loc bag. Disposal procedures must be agreed upon ahead of time.

My son is required to have an industry mentor, he would not be approved otherwise. Luckily I have a friend who is a biochemist at Genzyme. I told him that my first knee-jerk reaction was that the rules were a bit overly cautious and he quickly set me straight.

It's going to be an interesting project! Best of luck to anyone else giving this a try!
 
Simusid said:
My son just submitted a proposal to something almost identical to this for his science fair project. We have two ambulances. He will clean one regularly with a cleaning protocol (unspecified right now) and the other will essentially be the control.

There are quite a few rules to follow for a project like this that is sampling "unknown" bacteria/viri/fungus/etc. Petri dishes must be immediately sealed and not re-opened unless they are transported to a BSL-2 lab. They must be incubated and stored in a secondary container (like a sealed zip loc bag. Disposal procedures must be agreed upon ahead of time.

My son is required to have an industry mentor, he would not be approved otherwise. Luckily I have a friend who is a biochemist at Genzyme. I told him that my first knee-jerk reaction was that the rules were a bit overly cautious and he quickly set me straight.

It's going to be an interesting project! Best of luck to anyone else giving this a try!
Click to expand...


Keep us posted. That sounds really cool.
 
The difficult part in such a test is that all your test containers have to be sterile prior to use, even your growing substrate needs to be sterile. When I was in school we cleaned everything in an autoclave. You can buy sterile apgar. Glass petri dishes are a bit pricey so you would want to go with plastic ones which are one time use only. Be sure to wear a mask when swabbing so you don't introduce your bacteria into your experiment. It would be a good idea to have a control group, ie. The no bacteria dish. It should be a interesting experiment if you follow standard GLP (Good lab practice). Below is a link for some low cost test supplies.

http://www.hometrainingtools.com/agar-petri-dishes/c/193/
 
I'm nowhere near surprised that swabs would result in a lawn. In order to isolate the bacteria, you'd have to basically sit and watch it grow and then attempt to get streaks out of that. The other problem is that a lawn could conceivably choke out slower growing bacteria... so that's another reason to observe more actively to be able to more quickly isolate bacteria..

Something else to consider... if a GOOD disinfecting happens only once in a while, chances are very good that the bacteria that are eventually isolated would be resistant to some of the disinfectants used. Drug resistance is only one part of the kill the critter problem. Also, as Medic317 observed, probably even that wouldn't change the cleaning habits (or lack thereof) of most.

Oh, and micro was actually a fun class for me!
 
JPINFV said:
I tried it when I did microbio lab class during undergrad when I basically had unfettered access to the various supplies. It was an absolute pain in the butt to isolate anything because 24 hours of incubation almost always produced a lawn instead of streaks. By the time I got streaks out of it I was just out of time and needed to study for the final.
Click to expand...

Isolation streaks weren't working for you? :huh:
 
I was able to eventially get it, but I had to seriously dilute it.
 
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