Week 5: Research Continues

 Honestly, I wasn't able to do bench work this week, nor was I able to in lab. This week is hectic to me. I have been doing exams and non-ending schoolwork. I am having a hard time in my calculus course. I need to invest more time in it for me to succeed in it. More practice in my physics and chemistry as well. 

So, since I didn't go in this week and communicated with Josh about this, I made a plan to dig deeper on bacteria. Since I am working with E.coli, I wanted to know a bit more about it, and this is what I found out:

• Bacteria have the ability to incorporate dna from other organisms through conjugation, transformation and transduction ways.
• Some sorts of chemicals eg: calcium chloride could be used to increase membrane permeability and help transfer plasmid dna containing Ampicillin-sensitive E.coli in this process and yes, ampicillin is an antibiotic that is effective against many types of bacteria.
• Most bacteria range between 1-10 micrometers. E.coli is a gram-negative bacteria and it stains pink.  it has a thin peptidoglycan layer, but it also has an outer membrane. It has porins that allow only substances of a certain size to enter; can be connected to drug pumps etc...

Cotter, R. 2022. Unit 1 Handout: Microbial Structure. Phoenix (AZ): Phoenix College Department of Bioscience, pages 1-10. Cotter, R. 2022.