Biological Lights

By Dimitri Zlatev

Background

• Fluorescent bacteria is abundant in nature• Ocean ships often report glowing trails in their wake• Some tropical beaches have glowing waves at night• Last year, contaminated meat in Sichuan, China glowed blue.

My Plan:• Demonstrate the properties of fluorescent bacteria.

• Bacteria is only avaliable to high security labs (so it’s relitatively hard to get).

• Grow fluorescent bacteria from a fish, some gatorade, and some jello.

Background and references• A Mohankumar*& P Ranjitha: Purification and

characterization of esterase from marine Vibrio fischeri isolated from squid. Indian Journal of Marine Sciences Vol. 39 (2), June 2010, pp. 262-269.

• Peter Herring: Marine microlights: the luminous marine bacteria. Microbiology TodayVol29/NOV02

Equipment

• Pressure cooker

• Glass petrie dishes

• Blender

• Incubator for smelly fish plates

• Wooden coffee stirrers

Supplies

• Gelatin

• Gatorade

• FRESH ocean fish or squid

• Rubbing alcohol

Plate Preparation

• Use the recipie for knox blox (2X concentrated gelatin) on commercially available gelatin projects.

• Pressure cooker to sterilize equipment.

• Assume gatorade is delivered sterile, to be added without further boiling.

• Mix gatorade jello (2X) and pour into sterile glass petrie dishes. Need at least 10 plates.

• All plates to be bagged and refrigerated until use.

Fish Prep

• According to the Herring, bioluminescent bacteria are leaking out of creatures all the time. You COULD culture them out of sea water, but it is possibly easier to gather them from a squid

• Puree the squid, plate, and store in humid warm dark place.

• After 48 hours, sit in the dark with the plate for 15 minutes, then pick anything that LOOKS glowing, and transfer it to a fresh plate. You are selecting for glowing colonies, so they can multiply.

• After 4 or 5 transfers you should see glowing colonies

Dangers!

• We intend to grow Vibrio fischeri, a waterborne ocean bacteria.

• Its cousin is Vibrio cholerae, a freshwater contaminant that kills more than 100,000 people per year.

Public Health

• So how come our stinky fish doesn’t cause a plague in San Francisco?

SALT!

• Gatorade Endurance Formula is a high salt formulation. Fisheri loves it, cholerae cannot stand it, so we are selecting for bacteria that can endure a high salt concentration.

Have FUN!

• I mean, how cool is that?

• When is the science fair????