Author: 
Well it’s nearly the end of the first week so I thought I should introduce myself properly!!!!! My name is Alice and I’ve just finished my third year in Forensic Science :- )
For the next few months is will be working on a project based around the work I did for my dissertation, developing an infection model using Galleria mellonella (wax moth caterpillar) to study treatment of infections caused by the bacteria Acinetobacter baumannii.
Although for most this has been there first week of lab time, me being eager I had started last week with the intention of setting up my kill kinetics to discover the pathogenicity of the bacteria towards the caterpillars.
After injecting over 160 caterpillars (Yes I know…Cruel!!!) I had a good feeling that everything was going well…however after 96 hours of observations my results were not what I expected. Majority of caterpillars had beaten the infection and survived! Although this is great news for caterpillars worldwide…it’s not so great for me!!!
These results along with a couple of other indicators (including smell and questionable Gram stains) has lead me to doubt my bacteria, so starting next week I will be starting from scratch culturing a fresh batch of bacteria from a culti loop. So if your about in the lab next and fancy injecting a few caterpillars for me you will be more than welcome!
Next week I am also hoping to have set up a Checkerboard assay for measuring antibiotic synergy. This could be quite interesting as I have never done this before.
See you next week 🙂