Experiment Shadowing

For my experiment shadowing, I followed Matt Sanford in his work on the “Antibacterial effects of glucosinolates produced by Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata).”

Today I observed Matt plating two different strains of bacteria. Each of his plates was separated into three sections (the cover of his plate was divided, not the actual gel) and is used to test a chemical, positive control, and negative control. He uses the Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion method to treat each area of the plate. After the plates are left at room temperature for 24 hours and he observes bacteria growth, he measures the zone of inhibition. He uses this data to observe the effects of each different chemical, control, or concentration. From what I understand, he does this same thing pretty much every day in order to practice his technique and collect data.

He mentioned a couple of things that could potentially be problems with his project. The first being that the discs for the antibiotics come pre-soaked with the antibiotic and the other discs must have the liquid placed on them. He controls for this by making sure that the rest of his method stays the same. Another thing that he mentioned was measuring the zone of inhibition. Because the standard method for measuring the zone of inhibition is done with a ruler and is subject to one’s own opinion, there is room for bias. He gave the example of rounding down for a control and rounding up for an experimental zone, if he knew that the control was supposed to be smaller than the experimental. To control for this, he said that one could have someone else who does not know which zone is which do the measuring. This would allow for one to be unbiased in his or her measuring.

His project seems very different than the one I’m working on. One of the biggest differences that I observed is the fact that he wants to repeat his experiment many times in order to gather data which will then be used to draw conclusions, whereas in my project I don’t necessarily want to repeat my experiments. There are some parts that I would want to repeat in order to confirm findings, but for the most part I want to be successful in my different experiments so that I can move forward to other experiments.

Although our projects are very different, there are a few similiarities. One of the biggest similarities that I found was that both projects are extremely tedious, but in different ways. For Matt’s project he has to do things such as sterilize the tweezers, put a small amount of liquid on a disk, and then place that disk onto his plate. In my project I am often working with small amounts of liquid, placing liquid into very small wells, and observing things under microscopes. We also both work with some of the same equipment such as pipettes and we’ve both plated  bacteria as part of our projects.

I’m the kind of person that gets bored easily, which is why I’m thinking about doing research as a career. Depending on what one is working on, research can be ever-changing which would help keep my interest and turn into a career that I love. In the research that I’m working on, I do something different or new pretty much every day. I may have to go back and repeat a trial or a technique, but I usually have a couple of other steps to do in between which means that I’m not doing the exact same thing every day. In other words, I found it interesting to be able to shadow another student and learn what their research was about, but I think I’ll stick with my own project for now.