BISC209/S11: Assignment 209 Lab2

Lab2 Assignment: Table of Morphologic, Physical, and Metabolic Characteristics of Bacteria likely to be found in your soil community

Makeor Fill out a Table of the relevant morphologic, physical, and useful metabolic characteristics of expected genera of soil bacterial that you are attempting to find in your habitat. You may construct your own table or you may use the Excel file template, Soil Bacteria Culture Characteristics Spread Sheet S11, found in the Resources section of Sakai.

Morphologic or physical characteristics to include are:

1. shape (coccus, bacillus, spirillum, vibrio, etc),
2. arrangement (strep, staph, palisades, individual, diplo, etc),
3. colony morphology, motility,
4. Gram stain or other stain-reveling cell wall characteristic,
5. motility,
6. capsule formation,
7. sporulation, .
   
   

Metabolic characteristics should include:

1. expected reactions on SIMs media tests (H₂S and indol production),
2. unusual carbon-source utilization information,
3. any nitrogen-cycling capacity,
4. cellulose and/or starch degradation
5. phosphate recycling
6. any other interesting or unusual metabolic capabilities or incapabilities
   
   

Include an appropriate enrichment medium and conditions (preferred temperature and oxygen gas requirement or sensitivity) and note whether or not the bacteria will grow on a general purpose medium such as nutrient agar.

Include the following genera:

1. Caulobacter,
2. Asticcacaulis,
3. Hyphomicrobium,
4. Pedomicrobium,
5. Hyphomonas,
6. Thiodendron,
7. Azotobacter,
8. Bacillus,
9. Streptomyces,
10. Nitrobacter,
11. Nitrosomonas,
12. 3-5 other genera likely to be found in your soil community.
    
    

You will are likely to find most of this information in the following references: The Prokaryotes or Bergy's Manual. Directions for how to access the Wellesley library's electronic version of these books are in the Resources section of this wiki. Don't worry too much about finding every single one of the characteristics requested for every genera, but attempt to make the table as complete as possible.