Help on my thesis! What is the significance of using 'potato' in making blood agar? WHat are the advantages?
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Congrats, I am working on my thesis too.  There is PDA (potato dextrose agar), V8 agar (made from guess what, V8) and many others.  Each is designed for a specific purpose.  I am not an expert on this, but try a search engine.
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You're really going to have to do your own research on this one. \n\nYou've picked a very broad topic and it will be easier for you to understand if you can turn up some basic research materials on bioreactors/fermenters with diagrams.\n\n"with diagrams" is the key there. These things are easier to understand if you visualize them.
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I don't have a very specific answer for you, but maybe this will help.  PDA is generally used for growing fungi, and is not an especially good medium for bacteria\n\n"Potato dextrose broth (abbreviated as "PDB") and potato dextrose agar (abbreviated as "PDA") are common microbiological media for culturing both yeast and mold, but usually not bacteria."\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_dextrose_broth\n\n... though I did read this:\n\n"Potato dextrose agar is the most widely used medium for growing fungi and bacteria which attack living plants or decay dead plant matter."\nhttp://www.disknet.com/indiana_biolab/b029.htm\n\nHopefully that will narrow down your search!
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Tryptic Soy Agar. It's the basic medium (food in a petri dish or test tube) for growing bacteria.
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PBS usually comes sterile and it has a salt balance that can prevent any hyoer/hypotonic situations, but it is not always used to make growth media. Actually, I have used PBS in molecular techniques, but never in making media.
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It is selected media for growth of different micro organisms.It is acidic in nature.You can buy it from some pharmacuitial company.(depends where r u on globe)\n(Pick ur best answer)
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If your piles are external this is the wonder cure,I think its the starch but Im not sure.Take one raw ,I stipulate raw, not cooked potatoe(sweet potatoe may work but we only use ordinary european variety)   and mash it.it doesnt need to be a puree,just as long as its moisture is freely available.Take the mashed potatoe and put it in muslin approx. 2 inches long and an inch thick and wrapped twice,this is to stop the potatoe from going everywhere,also the potatoe will go black in a few hours from exposure to surrounding air.Now for the bit you will think is a joke,place the muslin where the sun dont shine,not inside but right up against the piles and overnight it may go as in my mothers case.the next day my mothers returned and she re did the above instructions and she never had them again,that was 43 years ago ,my age ,as it was pregnancy which partly caused them ,let me know that it worked as it my aim to help anyone I can.
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You can get disposable, sterile swabs.  These would probably work the best.  You should be able to get them via online... google "lab equipment swabs".\n\nopen your swab, being careful to not touch the tip.  Run the swab over the section you want to culture.  Then, simply smear the swab onto the petri dish.  \n\nFor the petri dishes, you probably want more than just an empty dish.  You want an agar plate.  An agar plate is a gelatinous material on the bottom of the dish that provides food and nourishment for the bacteria.\n\nYou could probably use gelatin as a stand-in.  Buy plain gelatin and make a batch twice as concentrated as it should be.  This will make the gelatin harder and less likely to melt at room temperature.\n\nGood luck!
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There is no starch digesting enzyme in a potato.  A potato is a bulb used to reproduce the potato plant.  The starch is used to provide nutrients for the growing plant.  Why would this breakdown the potato before the plants grow?\n\nThere is a starch digesting enzyme in our saliva.  The enzyme in our saliva is called Amylase.
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Soft agar?  Agar is a polymer of galactose.  It is a nutrient.  When used to promote bacterial growth or isolation, additional minerals and other chemicals are usually added.\n\nAdditional details can be found at the site listed below:
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1.What bacteria are we talking about (E.coli? Which strain?)\n2.There is no such standard solution for any type of bacteria.\n3.Why on earth would you need such a dilution? \n4.What type of facilites do you have access to (You can isolate single cells by FACs provided you have a proper marker and this expensive equipment)
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Yeah, that's good.  You could grow some type of plant in each and compare the results.  Some advice - you might want to specify your experiment a bit.  For example, a similar idea is to see whether potatoes grow without soil.  See the third site below.\n\nCheck out these sites.\n\nScience fair projects involving photosynthesis\nhttp://photoscience.la.asu.edu/photosyn/education/sciencefair.html\n\nAgricultural ideas for science fair projects\nhttp://www.ars.usda.gov/is/kids/fair/ideas.htm\n\nScience Fair Central\nhttp://school.discovery.com/sciencefaircentral/scifairstudio/ideas.html
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I had to make sauerkraut in first year university microbiology, and a quick Google search reveals that this is a fairly standard exercise. You should be able to find tons of info, a couple of links are below.\n\nYou don't add anything to the cabbage, you rely on the microorganisms already on the leaves (i.e., it's a wild culture, you don't add 'starter'.) Usually there's an initial growth of a coliform, but as acid levels in the mix rise, it selects for acid-tolerant bacteria including Leucostoc and Lactobacillus (also responsible for yogurt.) The important thing is to keep air out, as oxygen will allow the growth of other aerobic microorganisms including mold.
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Hypothesis - The saliva in a person's mouth will convert starch to sugar.\nExperiment - Chew an unsalted soda cracker in your mouth.  Do not swallow for 10 minutes.  Record changes of flavor and sweetness.\n\nYou will observe that it becomes sweeter.\n\nAnother experiment is to apply iodine to various mixtures.  Add iodine to salt, flour, & potato.  When added to salt, it stays the color of iodine.  But added to flour or potato, the iodine turns a blue-black because it reacts with the starch.
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"Presoak agent"- we arent talking about washing machines, right?  No, saliva has the enzyme salivary amylase, which does break starches down into sugar-it's not a terribly quick reaction, and your mouth adjusts to the slow rise in sugar, but potato starch is broken down into sugar in your mouth.\nAn interesting note-stomach acid plays a very minor role in digesting food, which is a surprise given how most of us think that the acid is the major digestive agent.  The great majority of digestion takes place in the small intestine, which is not acidic at all.  In fact, people who have difficulty making stomach acid digest food just fine.  Digestion is primarily enzymatic.  Stomach acid appears to be primarily there to kill infective agents, such as bacteria.  Very very few bacteria can live through passage in the stomach, and the vast majority of viruses are inactived there as well.  If you think about it, through most of our evolution we ate raw food, including raw meat-and probably we ate a good portion of spoiled raw meat.  Killing bacteria would have been incredibly critical to survival.
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Raw potatoes can give you fever...at least that's what we used to do when we were young to avoid going to school (I never tried it, so it could be a myth, but I definitely heard kids saying that). \nThere are some real fanatics who say that you should not cook food at all! \nPersonally, If you are trying to eat healthy, I suggest you leave out the potatoes. \nThe less you cook vegetables, the more their nutrients are preserved. It's a whole other question whether you can stomach eating only raw veggies for a long time. I couldn't!
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Agar plates are used to grow and study bacteria by spreading a thin solution of bacteria onto the agar (a gel with the consistency of jello).  LB stands for Luria Broth, food for the bacteria to grow.  Amp stands for Ampicillin, an anti-biotic (kills bacteria).  And 100 is the concentration of Ampicillin in the gel, 100 ug/mL.\n\nSo, what kind of experiment could you do with LB Amp 100?  Well, let's say you had some bacteria that would normally be killed by Ampicillin.  If you put them on the plate and incubated (heated) them, you would see nothing because all the bacteria would be killed.  Now, if you take another set of bacteria that has a gene that makes them resistant to Ampicillin, and plate and incubate them... you would see little spots (colonies) of bacteria growing.\n\nOf course, there are many more experiments you can do.  But that gives you an idea.  Hope that helps.