 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
Natural Science Forum / Biology / Microbiology / March 2005Where can I get Serratia Marcescens Culture?
Where can I get Serratia Marcescens Culture? I you where I can get this cheap like 1 oz. please email me at DrEvil1091@aol.com. I need it for a science fair project and can not find it anywhere. I am proving that dandelion roots are just as effective as antibiotics that are prescribed by the doctor. >Where can I get Serratia Marcescens Culture? I you where I can get this >cheap like 1 oz. please email me at DrEvil1091@aol.com. I need it for a >science fair project and can not find it anywhere. > >I am proving that dandelion roots are just as effective as antibiotics >that are prescribed by the doctor. Whoa! You may _test_ whether it is. You don't set out to _prove_, but to _test_. Be careful how your word your project. A good science fair project should show that the student understands the basic processes of science. Testing hypotheses is the key. A project that says it is setting out to prove something gets marked down right at the start, and it is hard to recover. I think that Serratia is a somewhat restricted organism. Your teacher should check a standard biology supply house that supplies bacteria, and see if they offer it for school use. You can also contact ATCC (American Type Culture Collection), but they certainly would not deal with you as an individual. Whether they will sell it to a school, I don't know, but nothing wrong with checking. But why Serratia? Why not a common lab organism, or perhaps one each gram+ and gram-. A lab strain of Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis would be good choices. If you have a college nearby, check with them. Go talk with the microbiology instructor; s/he may be able to provide good safe strains (and maybe even some supplies, advice, etc). What kind of dose response curve are you running? Do you already know something about antibiotic activity in dandelions? If so, is there any particularly interesting feature, such as activity on certain types of bacteria? Showing any special characteristics of the dandelion activity makes it all the more interesting. I assume you know that many/most common antibiotics are natural products, but from microbes. Large scale production from microbes is much easier than from plants. bob >>Where can I get Serratia Marcescens Culture? I you where I can get this >>cheap like 1 oz. please email me at DrEvil1091@aol.com. I need it for a [quoted text clipped - 37 lines] > > bob And, furthermore - it's easy to kill bacteria. What useful antibiotics [and chemically derived clinical antibacterial agents] do is selectively kill bacteria and do no [or very little] harm to the [human] host. Plant alkaloids, phenolics, etc., may show good antibacterial activity - but they usually show toxicity. The best [most selective] antibiotics are indeed natural products produced by bacteria. [except for the fungal product penicillin - the genes for which have been argued to have come from actinomycete producers]. You'd need to test the lack of toxicity of any compound [or extract] to show that it could be "as effective as" clinically used antibacterials. Believe me, the pharmaceutical industry has surveyed plant extracts for years... -- lynx >And, furthermore - it's easy to kill bacteria. What useful antibiotics [and >chemically derived clinical antibacterial agents] do is selectively kill [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] >used antibacterials. Believe me, the pharmaceutical industry has surveyed >plant extracts for years... Yes, yes, thanks for the additions! To the OP... What grade are you in? I think we have assumed you are in high school, and have had biology, so a good sci fair project at this level should reflect good understanding, as well as be "fun". (I just judged our local fair, for MS/HS a couple weeks ago. We have rather different expectations for 7th grade and 12th grade!) A good evaluation of how what you did fits into the big picture is important. We wouldn't expect that you would be able to do the kind of testing necessary to determine whether something would be a _useful_ antibiotic (which requires work with live animals, or at least some work with animal cells as a start), but you can do a series of good experiments, and show that you understand what they do show, and what their limitations are. Why not post what you propose to do in more detail? And/or... discuss it with a microbiology instructor at a local college. bob > Where can I get Serratia Marcescens Culture? I you where I can get this > cheap like 1 oz. please email me at DrEvil1091@aol.com. I need it for a > science fair project and can not find it anywhere. > > I am proving that dandelion roots are just as effective as antibiotics > that are prescribed by the doctor. I don't know where you are, but here in Europe, Serratia marcescens is not a species we'd provide for use in schools (or even by 1st year University students). If you want a coloured species, Pseudomonas chloraphis (formally known as Pseudomonas aureofasciens) would be good as it's bright yellow on peptone agar. If colour doesn't matter, then a Lactobacillus species from yoghurt or Paracoccus denitrificans would be suitable. Lesley Robertson http://www.beijerinck.bt.tudelft.nl http://kuenen.bt.tudelft.nl |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2009 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.