Staphylococcus Aureus! New Project and Article Assignments

  Staphylococcus Aureus

This week in the internship I finally figured out what my #7 unknown bacteria was! It was Staphylococcus Aureus! My MSA came back with bacteria growing so it was MSA positive. I then tested my bacteria broth with the following broths: glucose, lactose, mannitol, tryptone, TSI(agar), and TSB+6.5NaCl(sodium chloride). All the results(color changes and bacteria growth) proved that my bacteria was in fact Staphylococcus Aureus. A very resistant bacteria to antibiotics that can be found in the respiratory tract and on the skin. Staph aureus can cause skin infections, respiratory disease like sinusitis, food poisoning, and possible life threatening diseases like: pneumonia, meningitis, osteomyelitis, endocartitis, and toxic shock syndrome(TSS). 

To the left you can see my test tubes after they spent 24 hours in the incubator with color changes to yellow and some bacteria growth in the TSI. To the right you can see my MSA medium with the bacteria growing in it. This proves that my bacteria was able to grow in a high salt environment. The yellow was what you were looking for here.        

 Isolated Streak (Notice the different kinds of Spots)

Now that I found out that my bacteria was Staphylococcus Aureus, Josh gave me an assignment to look up a few articles and type a review on one. The article I chose to review is called "Staphylococcus Aureus small colony variants are susceptible to light activated microbial agents" by Sarah Tubby. Michael Wilson, John A. Wright, Ping Zhang, and Sean P. Nair. So far it's very interesting because I'm learning why Staph aureus is so resistant to antibiotics and this new method that has potential to eliminate S. aureus. Oh, yeah and I was assigned a brand new bacteria to solve and test on. I have done an isolated streak and have done the gram stain so far but something very interesting was noticed by Josh on my isolated streak. It actually had two different types of bacteria growing in it! How weird! So Josh told me to test the both bacteria in TSB and incubate them. Well that's what I've done so far and hopefully next week I will figure out what it is. Also I'm really looking forward to the field trip this Friday to the Arizona Museum of Natural History even though I have class at that time. Hmm not really sure what to do, but I will figure something out!