Hello World,
Went to the IBF today with Charissa, signed up for Module 1A and Module 6. Paid 256.8. Test on 10 August 11 just before school starts... Hope we pass! ( Actually I am less worried about Charissa because she is studying accounting and finance in SIM :) )
Also went to KK before that, she was wondering if we can A) make our own antibiotics and B) do our own bacteria test. So I wiki-ed, and...
A)There are many antibiotics with different mechanisms of action. A common antibiotic is penicillin, it is a liquid from a class of fungi called "penicillium". It is effective against Gram-positive, not so against Gram-negative. Its mechanism is that it disrupts the synthesis of peptoglycan microbial wall of bateria, a mesh of sugar and amino acid outside the plasma membrane. It can be produces synthetically but obviously, we lack the equipment. It can be grown on bread, tested on culture for anti-microbial property, then cultured in broth, filtrated then used.... but it might be wrong... Wiki reported that pencillins are also used in the production of cheese, like brie cheese, blue cheese, etc. Maybe just use cheese as antibiotics against Gram-positive microbes?
B)Again there are many ways to identify and classify bacteria, one of them is Gram-staining. The procedure (copied from wiki) are as follows:
0. Add 2ml of iodine , 3ml of potassium iodide in 70 ml of ethanol.
1.Boil body fluid for 1 minute.
2.Add some crystal violet solution to the boiled body fluid.
3.Add solution prepared in step 0
4.Add acetone or alcohol quickly after step 3
5. Add safranin
At step 4, if the bacterial are purple, then its Gram-positive, if it loses it colour then its Gram-negative. At step 5, Gram-negative bacteria should be pink.
Iodine, potassium iodide and ethanol should be readily available at pharmacist. Acetone are nail polish? Not sure.... or pure alcohols should be available as disinfectants at some pharmicist. Safranin should be found in dye shop, places that produce clothes or spice stores, if not they can be squeezed from the flower itself. Crystal violet can be bought online in bulk or from science interest shops.
Note: there might be factual errors in this article as I got this information from wikis and i am not formally trained in pharmacetics, microbiology or medicine :p
