photosynthetic bacteria - high school project (Feb/10/2011 )

Hi everyone I'm looking for some photosynthetic bacteria that can be easily cultivated on plates and in liquid culture.
I also need defined minimal medium for the same bacteria that supports growth only if culture is exposed to light and in the presence of CO2 but not in the absence.

Idea is to set different conditions and simulate culture dynamic and cycle of CO2 and O2 (e.g. bubbling air from bottle with baker yeasts into culture without any other C source...)
I was contacted to organize few projects based on preexisting interest of few high-school students. I need to bring those interests together into few projects. Thing is that I'm not into this field and I need someones help.

I already found some education material concerning isolation of purple non-photosynthetic bacteria (e.g. http://www.splammo.net/bact102/102pnsb.html ) but I'm looking for some...more direct help.
At this moment I'm trying to avoid isolating different strains, defining growing conditions, minimal mediums... It's time consuming, I cant make it :-(

I wouldn't wont to disappoint those pupils and to make them quit scientific career before they even start collage studies.

I would appreciate if you could help me by pointing me where to look, whom to ask or by sharing some cultures and infos concerning growing conditions.

Any help is more then welcome.

Carolina Biological stocks Synechocystis nigrescens. I believe it grows slowly, however, and might be somewhat discouraging as an educational target. I couldn't find much information on its growth rate. Have you considered an algae instead of a photosynthetic bacterium? Growth would be faster, likely.
http://www.carolina.com/product/151910.do?KickerID=int_t_sgt_prokaryotes_synechocystisnigrescens

Also, see their cyanobacteria set of six cultures.

This is very useful. I'm aware that growth rate of photosynthetic bacteria is slow. I was hoping that some fast growing strain is available, but this is also fine.
We were thinking about algae but their biology teacher gave some time ago lecture about conditions during early stages of life development and they also want to simulate some of those conditions and monitor how bacteria are changing environment. Nothing spectacular just to see how bacteria are utilising CO2 using light energy. If we give them algae...they might have a problem to swallow eukarytic cell as reason for atmosphere transformation. There is also a problem that we are not skilled with algae.
Good part is that one research group near is working with moss (Physcomitrella patent) and they are going to organise few experiments using some of old reactors sitting in the basement.
This cyanobacteria set looks promising. I'll do some more research about those and probably order it.

Thanks phage434.

P.S. This is what happens when a supervisor informs you how you are in-charged for stimulating students to chose biology as field of their studies

http://sites.google.com/site/scienceprofonline/microbiologylecture
http://sites.google.com/site/microbiologypowerpoints/home

check those links for some general information.

Its rather hard to do what you want. It takes time, they dont grow fast.

Maybe it would be nice to let your students "identify" some bacteria?
Lets say you give them 4-5 different ones.. and let them identify them using a simple test like the API teststrips?

Checking if they produce CO2 is hard, you more or less need some expensive equipment if you really want to verify that and its something that you dont really see....
Algaes are indeed easier and faster to work with in that case.

Hi pito,
thanks.
I completely agree... I was told what I need to organise and now I'm looking what can be done.
Students are suppose to spend some time in few of the labs and than go for one project only.
I'm trying to convince my supervisor to set some experiments that we need and not to organise something that we know nothing about. But...no success for now :-(
Might be just me but doing same things over and over is wast of time even for educational purpose.
By giving them real/new things to dig into students would still learn a lot and additional they would conduct useful experiments.

P.S. We are not after CO2. O2 is thing that we are looking for.

jivaro on Sat Feb 12 19:02:38 2011 said:

Well measuring O2 will be as hard as CO2.

To give you more information, check the links.
(first link is a book you might want to buy, to help you on the basics in microbiology).


http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1904798985/ref=sib_books_pg?p=S01I&keywords=Photosynthetic+bacteria&ie=UTF8&qid=1297590586#_

http://enjoywithreal.com/2010/09/27/mechanism-of-photosynthesis/ (to show you how hard it is what you are trying to do)

http://enjoywithreal.com/2010/09/27/mechanism-of-photosynthesis/ http://www.cib.espol.edu.ec/Digipath/D_Papers/CC2805.pdf and http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Publications/Papers/PDF/HU2002/HU2002.pdf for some general information.

and http://openwetware.org/wiki/IGEM:Stanford/2009/Photosynthesis as a start for you to get more information on the project going on about photosynthesis by bacteria.

I think that the project you are trying to do, is too hard.