Koala Poop Microbiome Class: Week 10, Antibiotic Resistance Measurements

Since this was the last week of the quarter, we didn’t require the students to blog as in the previous 9 weeks.  Also, mostly we recapped what had happened in the class and discussed various assignments.  But the students did measure the antibiotic resistance of their strains, and we also had a powerful demonstration of …

Koala Poop Microbiome Class: Week 9, Antibiotic Resistance

(This blog post was prepared by students enrolled in the Koala Poop Microbiome Class in the Fall of 2016 at UC Davis) This week we focused on antibiotic sensitivity on the individual bacteria that were identified last week. The day before class, the bacteria that we have been working with all quarter were recultured in …

Koala Poop Microbiome Class: Week 7, Process Sanger Sequences and BLAST

(This blog post was prepared by students enrolled in the Koala Poop Microbiome Class in the Fall of 2016 at UC Davis) This week in lab we finally identified our microbes! The past six weeks have been a culmination of lab work, both successful yet sometimes frustrating, to bring us to this point of finally …

Koala Poop Microbiome Class: Week 6, PCR Cleanup and Qubit

(This blog post was prepared by students enrolled in the Koala Poop Microbiome Class in the Fall of 2016 at UC Davis) This week’s goal was to successfully perform PCR cleanup. Last week we performed gel electrophoresis to determine if there was a positive or negative PCR result. At the end of last week, a …

Koala Poop Microbiome Class: Week 3, DNA Extractions

(This blog post was prepared by students enrolled in the Koala Poop Microbiome Class in the Fall of 2016 at UC Davis) This week we set out to extract DNA from isolated bacteria grown in liquid culture to further analyze it. Students in the lab were assigned test tubes containing tannin degrading bacteria which have …

The “Koala Poop Microbiome” Class at UC Davis

You know sometimes you use a working title for something for long enough that it becomes the title? Like “Snakes on a Plane”.  That’s what happened in this case,  we also meant to come up with a name for this class… never did and so the official name at the registrar is “Koala Poop”.  Awesome. …