This week was all about the poster I'm presenting to ASU. The topic is the development of a protocol for the isolation of agrobacterium and rhizobium from the environment. I was able put the finishing touches to my poster just in time for Matt and Josh to send it to print. What made making the poster easier was the help of Melina and Gilberto, since I probably wouldn't have been able to get the correct dimensions for the poster. I wanted to make it look fancy and intricate; Josh, however, advised me to keep it simple and keep it simple I did. This made my job a lot easier because the poster has only the information it needs, a couple images from my project and the design is simple and to the point.

This week I also decided whether I will keep my project with Agrobacterium going or just start another project, in this case it would be video game physiology.I decided to keep going with my initial research and try to come up with different ways to isolate agrobacterium. At the same time I decided to do more research on video game physiology because I'm going to be doing both projects at the same time. I already have a decent amount of volunteers to play video games when needed.

It's still early on my research about Video Game physiology to start constructing a protocol. Seeing as how I'm a big fan of video games, being a gamer myself, I'm really excited to start this project and learn the effects of video games on the brain. Lots of studies have been done on this subject so I shouldn't run short of resources. But like I said it is still too early to even begin thinking about specifics.

Next week I will focus my efforts into increasing the amount of data from my experiment with agrobacterium, and I will also come up with better media for better growth of isolated bacterias. At the same time I will begin my research on video games. These two project have plenty of null time in between procedural steps to allow work to be done to both of them at the same time.

So close and yet.....

 Finally a breakthrough in my project. A colony of bacteria that meets the morphology of agrobacterium on a Macconkey plate appeared in one of my plates. It has pink coloration, it is round, convex and appears to be engulfed in a mucous coating. It is also Gram negative like agrobacterium. This colony grew from the sample of soil I obtained from the school's garden, which I believe might have given Matt the idea of getting soil samples from different places in Phoenix College. From here on, I'll be collecting a sample of soil from all over PC, diluting 1g each soil in 1% peptone water and inoculating them into Mac plates. Since Macconkey media is Gram-negative selective I decided to use this kind of media for future diluted soil inoculations.

The first day I will bring the soil sample to the lab and after the dilution process I'll be streaking Macconkey plates. The next day I will repeat this process with new soil. The same day I will be testing any colonies that grew from the previous soil sample. I will administer tests such as maltose, lactose and glucose, among others. The third day I'll repeat the process of the previous day and I'll continue this pattern until I obtain enough data samples to increase the validity of my results.

Also, if anyone out there has seen or owns a plant with crown gall on it please let me know. It would be a great addition to my research. They may look like this: