First day on site my mentor ran me through how to use a Optical Coherence Topography device to measure biofilm thickness on our membrane. The topography is actually a device you would see in a optometrists office. Its designed to take cross section pictures of retinas.
From there we created a new batch of bacteria, plated it and incubated it until it was ready to be refrigerated.
On the device below a Hach Odyssey Spectrophotometer we checked to make sure our bacteria had replicated into large qualities before plating them.
I was introduced to a Epifluorescence Microscope. Leica DM6 B
My mentor is out of town for the rest of the week and has given me data to record using the imaging software Thorimage and ImageJ. I had/have to render a 3d and 2d image from the OCT and measure the volume of the biofilm on roughly 20-30 different samples. Below is a 2d and 3d image in Thorimage.
And then if this post put you to sleep your not the only one?
Since I know your project, this is a very thorough and informative compilation.
Great post Elliot. I see you are using fancy equipment. My mentor will be out of town next week. How did you feel going through the procedures without your mentor?
I definitely have had a few hick-ups that I have to wait on his return to fix. However, I feel he prepared me well in advance. He went over a list of things for me to do while he was gone and extra things incase I finished the list early. He made sure to check his email regularly so if I had any issues I could contact him and hammer them out.
As a newbie to this whole thing, could you please explain your cool graph to me in layman’s term? I’m in another RET and I teach CS and I’m interested to see what is being measured.
The solid piece is a membrane. A membrane allows good things through and keeps the bad out. The blue /teal areas are biofouling which is organisms growing on the membrane. Over time these form colonies and can make the membrane dysfunctional. I am measuring the amount of organisms living on the membrane as its being treated to see what kills off the organisms best.
Think of it as the membrane coffee filter that you could never replace or remove. The coffee beans are the biofouling. Each time you use the machine they get stuck on the filter that cannot be removed. You want to find a way to remove the beans that are stuck on the filter so you can get all of your coffee………… I hope this helps…….