BISC314:Materials

BISC314: Environmental Microbiology

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LAB #1: Learning Sterile Technique and Field Trip to the Cheese Shop

Today we will be taking a trip in to Cambridge to visit Formagio Kitchen, a famous cheese shop in the area - they even have a cheese cave! Each of you will pick a cheese to be your microbial habitat for the next few weeks. We will sample a large variety and learn about where these cheeses came from. Let's be sure we have representative cheeses from these four main classes:

1. A blue cheese 2. A fresh cheese 3. A washed rind cheese 4. A soft, brie-like cheese

Back in the lab, we'll review sterile technique and inoculate media of various kinds from our cheese rinds. We will isolate a beautiful array of different microbes (both eukaryotic and bacterial) from these cheeses and in the next few weeks you'll be using them to investigate two major microbial community functions: growth interactions and chemical signaling.