Advanced Higher Biology Project - any ideas?

Can anyone think of any biology projects that involve sampling microorganisms and culturing them in the lab? I've done a lot of work experience in this area and have several booklets on E.Coli and Legionella, but I cannae think of a hypothesis or even an aim. Anyone know anywhere good to sample from? And is microbiology even worth it for projects?

Reply 1

HarisMalik98

What about comparing the number of colonies of coliform bacteria in different water samples? Perhaps some samples from a city river, and then some from tap and bottled water? Your hypothesis could be that you think the river water will contain more coliform colonies due to higher pollution, whilst treated water will contain less colonies.

There's a few ways of doing this, but using selective media is a good start, such as an agar that is selective to E. coli and other coliforms. Then inoculate different agar plates with the same volumes of each respective water sample, and then do a simple colony count (assuming you don't have access to more complex equipment at school).

You might struggle to get a hold of an agar that is highly specific to only coliforms at school level. However, you could get MacConkeys agar to select for Gram-negatives and enterics - which is usually a good sign of faecal pollution. With MacConkey's, there's also the ability to differentiate lactose-fermenters which gives further resolution about what species might be present. I'd also recommend running some control plates that are inoculated with known coliforms like E. coli (which is one of the best indicators of faecal contamination). Of course, as part of your investigation, you would then describe the limitations of using these methods and how it could be improved with access to better reagents and equipment.

AIM: Compare the number of colonies of gram-negative and enteric bacteria in samples of river water, tap water and bottled water.

Reply 2

Matt Lee

Answering your second question first. Yes, it is still worth as though I understand the trend is shifting, but it is still critical, as there are a lot of clues hidden still there undiscovered like energy, toxicity, cimate related things, which are wating to be discovered.

You can do a few things for the project:

a) Sample out microorganisims from saliva of people with different diets or different traits and study the differences. Within the microganisims you can see differences like bacteria viruses, etc: you can get the list here: https://dewwool.com/examples-of-microorganisms/.

b) Sample out miicroganisims from soil and see crop growth is affected by the presence/absence of microganisims, and farmers can take calculated approaches to farming.

c) Sample out microgranisims from different water samples and see the differences, and why such high/low levels of microorganisims are present.