Quick Update

It’s been about a month since my last blog post, and—unsurprisingly—a lot has happened.


After placing our order through the University of Ohio’s Bacillus Genetics Stock Center, I got in touch with a professor at Georgia Tech. He generously agreed to let me use his lab to culture the bacteria. When the sample arrived, we quickly realized that the shipping method wasn't sterile. Because of that, we had to plate the contents on petri dishes and subculture the dominant colony to isolate our Bacillus strain. A few days later, we had a successful OB broth culture. To keep our testing conditions as controlled as possible, we autoclaved the soil beforehand. Our procedure began with soaking the seeds in hydrogen peroxide, then rinsing them with distilled water. After that, we soaked the seeds in the diluted Bacillus broth for 15 minutes. Immediately following the soak, we planted the seeds in soil and watered them with 20 mL of sterile water. Right now, we're in the process of analyzing the data from our test batch and plan to repeat the procedure on the garden’s seeds sometime next week.


That’s it for now — just a quick update from the lab! 

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