My Unknown Bacteria

For many years the identification of microorganisms has been important in the world of medicine. It is essential or correct disease diagnosis in patients and for proper treatment. Knowing the correct identity and characteristics of microorganism is crucial when disease outbreaks occur in populations, also knowing how humans can benefit from microorganisms is important; many can be used in making certain foods or antibiotics.

Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria documentary has had me paranoid. It’s scary to think foreign bacteria can enter your body and shut it down. The most informing information was the NDM-1 wasn’t a bacteria it was a resistance gene that can turn bacteria into superbugs. I do think antibiotics are being over used. I agree with M.D Arjun Srinivasan,” the more you expose a bacteria to an antibiotic, the greater the likelihood that resistance to that antibiotic is going to develop. So the more antibiotics we put into people, we put into the environment, the more opportunities we create for these bacteria to become resistant”.

The purpose of this lab was to identify two unknown bacteria from a mixed culture. The reason for identification of unknown bacteria was to help students recognize different bacteria through different biochemical tests and characteristics. This is important in the medical field because identification of unknown bacteria can help treat a patient by knowing the contributing source of a disease. Also knowledge of different bacteria helped others make antibiotics used today. This lab was completed by using the methods learned thus far in identification of bacteria.

In class, we were given the task of identifying an unknown bacterium broth culture. After receiving number 69, I went through several tests to figure out what bacterium I received. First, I created a slide from my broth by putting a small amount of the unknown broth on to a clean slide and letting it dry for ten minutes. After this, I stained the slide by applying four reagents in order; crystal violet, grams iodine, decolorizer and safranin. From the stained slide, I discovered that this bacterium was gram-negative, which would determine the next couple of tests I would do to identify my unknown bacterium. I began by streaking for confluent growth from my broth culture onto a TSA plate. From the TSA plate, I aseptically transferred a loop

In the last decade, the number of prescriptions for antibiotics has increases. Even though, antibiotics are helpful, an excess amount of antibiotics can be dangerous. Quite often antibiotics are wrongly prescribed to cure viruses when they are meant to target bacteria. Antibiotics are a type of medicine that is prone to kill microorganisms, or bacteria. By examining the PBS documentary Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria and the article “U.S. government taps GlaxoSmithKline for New Antibiotics” by Ben Hirschler as well as a few other articles can help depict the problem that is of doctors prescribing antibiotics wrongly or excessively, which can led to becoming harmful to the body.

Microorganisms are both beneficial and harmful. These microorganisms are important to humans because they play a role in the ecology of life, by decomposing wastes, both natural and man-made, such as creating nitrogen fertilizer at the root zones of certain crops. Other several pathogens that can cause serious harm, even immediate death due to the diseases or disease causing products they produce. Overall, microorganisms play an important role in life.

The first step toward identifying this unknown organism was to perform a Gram Stain to differentiate between gram positive and gram negative bacteria. This is an important step because it directs what the next tests will be. My Gram Stain on sample #12 showed that the bacteria was gram negative, however, after receiving the results of the OF glucose, H2S, Citrate, Urease and Motility tests, it was apparent that my Gram Stain was contaminated. I then performed a catalase test which came back negative, so I ordered a Bacitracin disc, Optochin disc and a CAMP test which had to be incubated overnight. After receipt of those test results,

|EMB Agar | |Distinguishes bacteria that ferment |Dark blue colonies with|E. coli and P. |

The purpose of this study was to identify the unknown bacterium #305. This sample was collected from the urine of a 64 year old hospital patient named “Doris”. Several tests were conducted to determine the morphological and physiological characteristics of the unknown. These tests included but were not limited to: motility, gram staining, salinity tolerance, and fermentation of different substances. After assessing the observed results, the identity of unknown bacterium #305 was suggested to be Citrobacter freundii. The test results, with the exception of the urea test, were very consistent with the expected results.

In lab we were given a test tube with a mixed culture and we were instructed to isolate the two microbes and perform tests to identify them. My first step was to mix up the tube and make an isolation streak onto a nutrient agar plate, to try and separate the microbes. On my isolation streak, only one type of microbe grew, so I tried again. From the growth I had, I performed a gram stain and I determined that the first microbe was positive. After my second try at an isolation streak, I still only had one type of microbe, so I took my original sample from the tube, and tried to grow my negative microbe on an EMB plate. An EMB plate is used to grow a negative microbe and inhibit the growth of a positive microbe. The EMB was ineffective because

An unknown microorganism from three potential microbes—Bacillus megaterium, Escherichia coli, and Enterococcus faecalis—was determined by performing eight biochemical tests. Biochemical tests that were used to differentiate these possible microorganisms from each other were gram staining, motility with a semi-solid agar tube, oxygen requirements, catalase test, phenylalanine deaminase test, eosin methylene blue agar (EMB) and mannitol salt agar (MSA). The unknown microorganism was further clarified through a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test and basic local alignment search tool (BLAST) database. Based on all the observations of the tests, the unknown bacterium was identified as B. megaterium.

Can proper medication be identified within hours of admittance to a hospital? At the moment this is impossibility. The current gold standard for bacterial identification is for a body fluid sample to be collected, often blood, and sent to a lab for a bacterial culture and analysis. According to Midi Labs, the base price for bacterial identification is $99 with a return time of three days [1]. The analysis can be expedited; however, the costs associated with this increase considerably (the highest listed at $175). Because of this delay time, it is possible for the infection to become a bloodstream infection (BSI) and escalate to sepsis.

The unknown bacteria B22 contained an opaque white, circular colony, along with an irregular margin on the initial inoculated agar plate. The broth characteristics included growth with the presence of a flocculent and all around cloudiness; however, the slant characteristics included just a spreading edge. After the bacterium identified to be gram positive, a blood agar plate identified the bacteria to have gamma hemolysis capabilities; additionally, the mannitol salt agar identified the bacterium to indeed ferment the mannitol and the urease enzyme was as well identified from the urea agar. Subsequently, the phenol red mannitol broth showed no mannitol fermentation and the phenol red glucose broth showed fermentation with acid and no gas

Mycobacteria are rod-shaped bacteria which require oxygen for growth. Each species has an acid-fast staining property during some stage of its growth cycle. It has thick, waxy, outer coating which can lead them to thrive in aquatic environments. For some time, scientists have known of bacteria that are similar to Mycobacterium tuberculosis, but that grow and act differently. When tuberculosis was a much more widespread problem and microbiology was much less able to tell the difference between similar microbes, these atypical mycobacteria were ignored. Today, they have been classified more precisely as members of the same species and called atypical (or nontuberculosis) mycobacteria. Although the medical profession has known about these atypical

In the medical field which I am going into, it is very important to be able to identify bacteria. By identifying bacteria, we can prevent, diagnose its presence and determine what is the appropiate treatment to treate the diseased caused by them. For example, if a patient is complaining of a sore throat we can take a sample of the throat to determnne what bacteria if any is causing the pain. Once the bacteria has been identified the patient can be prescribed the appropiate antibiotic. Another reason why is so important to identify bacteria and to know its characteristics, is for pharmaceutical companies to come up with medication and to decided the type of vaccines that can be used to counter it.