A slight worry that something may have gone wrong was happily brushed aside by two lovely thick cultures pulled out of the shaker.



We had posted most of the media required prior to departure, as its inconspicuous content is less fit for travel. Unfortunately, Christmas postings left little guarantee of arrival and so we had to travel with a backup.



With cultures growing we needed to prepare minimal media - more often this means making separate components that are blended together after sterilisation. 



A great tip we learnt from our lab partners was an alternative use of chemical catalogues. Instead of using expensive autoclave tape (£40 a roll) they simply wrap a bit of paper around - brilliant! 

No need to wait here. Stacking our components into a pile before autoclaving. 



Our batch of components are sterilised. Nice and quick. Back home (London) we are dependent on this job being carried out by technicians.
 


A tricky culprit was finding a way of autoclaving sugar (glucose). The machine did not have specific settings and we did not know how to adjust the pressure separately. After bit of experimenting and recalling, we figured that 110ºC gave us 10 pound pressure we were aiming for.           



Keeping the eye on the ball....bacteria's don't like caramalised sugar. 



Sterilising Vitamin solution (B1). Vitamin solutions can be sensitive to temperature and we use a micro filter. 



Finally, we could put it all together. And we have a nice odourless minimal media solution.    





Fixing a mistake from previous day - luckily no disaster - I had made my antibiotic solution too concentrated (200mg/ml) and needed to dilute. 



Finally, back in the "oven" with our 5ml cultures transferred to 200ml minimal media and Luria Broth -  fingers crossed!