MICRO 260 lab 8

from the results, about how many organisms/ml can be in a clear broth without showing any sign of turbidity?

MANY

what are two sources of error in this procedure?

There are many potential sources of error. Examples include: incorrect measuring of the sample or diluent; insufficient mixing; not switching pipettes between each step of the serial dilution; contamination because of poor sterile technique; or inadequate

if you serially dilute a sample with three 1:10 dilutions, what is the dilution of the last tube?

10-3

if you add 1.0ml to 99ml of water, what is the dilution of the sample?

10-2

if you had a solution containing 6000 organisms/ml, how could you dilute and plate a sample so that you had a countable plate?

A common answer to this question is as follows:
1. Add 1.0ml of the original broth culture to 9.0ml water (to obtain a 10-1dilution). The 10-1 dilution will have 600 cells/ml.
2. Add 1.0ml of the 10-1 dilution to 9.0ml water (to obtain a 10-2 dilution). T

serial dilution

preparing a dilutin in steps instead of one dilution

turbidity

cloudiness

viable (bacteria)

capable of growing and dividing

Plate count

each viable bacterium produces a colony when growing on an agar plate. ideal number of colonies on plate is 30-300.

direct count

bacteria put on a slide with squares that has been designed to hold a specific volume of liquid. faster than a plate count but there have to be about 1x107 organisms/ml and both viable and nonviable organisms appear.

turbidometric method

spectrophometer measures turbidity. must first correlate optical density (O.D.) with plate counts.

new pipet

must be used for each transfer between a more concentrated solute and less concentrated solute.

TNTC

too numerous too count=more than 300.

dilution =

sample ml / (sample ml+dilutent ml)

the # of organisms/ml in the original suspension=

# of organisms on the plate x 1/sample vol x 1/dilution