Mystery Microbe Project

This project will be a comprehensive, capstone lab challenge for your Microbiology lab
experience. You will receive a microbe of unknown species, identified simply with a letter and
number, and your assignment is to figure out what species it is. So far this semester you have
been practicing the necessary protocols and techniques to help identify species of microbes. For
the next few lab periods you will run tests, techniques, and procedures available through our lab,
that you see fit in order to deduce the species. Use ALL information available to you. No
information is bad information. This is an individual project, and each person will do their own
lab work. Therefore, every student will receive her/his own microbe and be responsible for
identifying it on his/her own. There are numerous different species—some of which look very
similar to others initially—and they have been randomly assigned.
You can perform any staining technique (simple, Gram, spore, capsule, acid-fast) that
you learned this semester. Biochemical tests available to you include: glucose and lactose
Durham tubes, EMB agars, citrate slants, TSIA slants, MR tests, SIM deeps, urease testing,
Sabouraud agars, XLD agars, Hektoen enteric agars, starch agars, mannitol salt agars, PEMBA
medium, and catalase testing. Some of these tests are new to you, so, it is necessary for you to
do some research to discover what those media/tests will help you figure out.
Begin your project by conducting staining tests during the first week. After you collect
the data from the stains you must submit a testing proposal for the second week. Once approved,
you will spend the second week conducting biochemical tests and collecting those data.
At the end of the project, once you have concluded the species of your microbe, you will
need to write an abbreviated lab report to present your protocols and findings. You will need to
write a report with a:
• Materials and Methods section.
Most, if not all, of your methods in this project are tried, tested, and published
protocols. For this reason, it is unnecessary to write out much detail regarding
your methods if you can simply cite a publically available protocol from a
reputable source. If you do cite a protocol from an outside source, though, you
must note any differences that exist between the publication and the steps that you
actually executed. Our class documents are NOT published and publically
available, therefore you cannot cite them in your report.
• Results section.
• Discussion/Conclusion section.
• References section.
Points will be awarded for:
• Lab report format and writing. This includes quality of images included in your report.
(25 points)
• Breadth of data presented on which a conclusion was drawn, and accuracy of data
presented. (15 points)
• Final species conclusion (right or wrong). (10 points)

* Follow all formatting guidelines laid out in the Mystery Microbe Lab Report Guidelines sheet
available on D2L.