Just another round of moth infections… I’ve had to separate them into individual wells after infection, because I discovered during the early days that they will cannibalise each other when hungry. 😱

Today I’m just infecting then with different strains of my bacteria. Some are mutants, and don’t make a particular protein involved in glucose/sugar uptake. Others have had said protein artificially put back, and the bacteria make more of the protein than they would normally. There’s also some ordinary bacteria that haven’t been mutated in any way. At this stage I’m hoping to see all the bacteria behave the same in the larvae. Over the course of eleven days, I’ll be monitoring the health of the larvae. Eventually they will succumb to infection and die. Even though they’re a pest species, and destroy bee hives in the wild, I still feel a bit bad about killing them.

Categories: Ph D posts

Tagged as: LabLife PhDLife

ABugsLife

A Ph. D graduate in Microbiology, residing in Victoria, Australia. Currently working in multiple locations but still in the STEM field. 👀 🦠 🧫 🧬