Category: status

Free food and alcohol!!! Now I have your attention it would be really good to see you all at the Postgraduate Symposium on Friday 12th July at Riseholme Conference Centre. There will be a range of talks and posters from postgrads in the School. There is even a prize for best student-asked question so you can be in profit for the day. And free lunch and wine. If you want to come can you please drop me an email so I can get some idea of numbers for catering etc….

So good to hear so much form you, Faris, please keep going! I would love to hear from the rest of you as well though, so I can keep updated on the research going on. I’m hoping I’ll be able to start updating regularly soon as well, as I get boards out of the way!

Right, so some plaques were found! Today or yesterday even which is good news. About time I got some of them bad boys. On Monday or during the week these plaques could be potentially isolated and analysed which is exciting. At the same time I am going to try and produce some plaques from making more plates which allows analysis of many as poss. This could be a good week so Ill update as much as poss.

Today no plaques were found which was pretty disappointing but slight change of the method is to be undergone which will develop a method to produce a good plaque assay. Although no plaques were formed, Its just the beginning of the journey for me and its pretty cool….

Right so today’s been a pretty good day. My Broths were looking pretty good which was a good start. Managed to make some soft agar in tubes which was pretty cool. My nutrient agar was ready and I managed to mix my e.coli broth with it to make my pour plates.After a lovely big mac meal with free cheeseburger I isolated my phages using a centrifuge and a syringe containing 0.22 micron filter. I then mixed these with the soft agar. The soft agar containing the phages was placed on the top of the pour plates. This was then incubated at 37 degrees Celsius so the phages can interact with the e.coli in the nutrient agar. So to summarise the theory: The plates contain a bottom layer containing nutrient agar and e.coli where the top layer contains soft agar with the phages so hopefully the phages will interact with the e.coli overnight. I know you Biomed know this already so soz. Although I might not get the results first time, I now have confidence in doing plaque assays and feel this project could be a pretty sick one.

Today was the first practical day which involved making agar, making an e.coli broth which finger crossed will be ok and 6 tubes of nutrient broth containing a small volume of Brayford pool water. These have all been left to incubate and tomorrow I will be starting the soft agar and isolating phages if all goes to plan….

Hi my name is Faris and I have just finished second year of the Forensic Science degree. I have received some funding from the University to carry out a project based on the analysis of antibiotic resistance genes present in bacteriophages. Im pretty excited and should be starting this week and would appreciate help from anyone in the lab and will try and return the favour.

Today I made some plates and restreaked some Paracoccus strains. Let’s see if they grow…