NiaMarie Jackson

Bacteria are unicellular prokaryotes. In nature, bacteria exist as mixed populations. In the laboratory these populations must be separated so that characteristics of individual species may be observed. When microbial ecologists seek to isolate new bacteria from the environment, they must experiment with many nutrients and growth conditions to culture the newly isolated bacteria in the lab. It is often very difficult to replicate bacterial growth conditions in the lab.  It is estimated that only 0.1% of all bacteria have been successfully cultured. The goal of this course is for students to develop protocols that will allow the identification (phenotypic and genotypic) of Bacillus species from nature.

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Students will be divided into small groups and given a task that will become part of a big group experiment. Students will research background, and how it works, and finally produce a working protocol. All protocols will be pooled and used by individual students. Using the compiled protocols, students will go out in nature and isolate bacteria from soil and identify Bacillus species based on information compiled.

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(Investigation and Research (BIO4277) Spring 2018)