Day 2 thoughts.  Phagefinders. 

Planned:

Tonight:  Note book chapters to zerox before leaving. 

Remember to bring:  plastic bags for sample collection; magic marker to label bags; paper to describe soil source.  Digital camera to document source locations.

Did:  Visited the Botanical Gardens and collected soil samples.  We returned with 8 samples collected from unique and described locations so that on future visits we can return to the same approximate locations as perhaps some change in the type of phage may be discovered.  We collected 8 samples from the gardens.  Each student will have 2 different samples to work with during the course. 

Today's materials:   

Pointers:  Plate preparation.  When pouring 7h10 plates, it is okay to pour them an not pipette them.  This keeps bubbles from forming, and allows for more rapid preparation.  Also, the plates can be left on the bench top after making for a week or so, this keeps them nice and dry and since we have not needed to prepare media with antibiotics yet, it was okay to store them just on the bench.  Phage transduction, M. smegmatis.  Adding phage to Mycobacteria was anticipated to be straight-forward, and is easier than for M. tuberculosis.  We did not incubate our phage for 4 h at 37 C as recommended by Larsen (p. 318, Larsen), and instead