Winogradsky column lab page!


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Welcome to the Winogradsky column lab page! Students from the Departments of Biological Applications and Technology, University of Ioannina and Icthyology and Aquatic Environment, University of Thessaly, Greece and the Microbiology course, Faculty of Sciences, University of Cádiz, Spain, discuss their findings on Winogradsky columns they constructed!

If you want to add a post, please feel free to contact the blog administrators (Hera Karayanni, Sokratis Papaspyrou or Kostas Kormas)!



Καλωσορίσατε στη σελίδα των Winobloggers! Διαδικτυακός τόπος συνάντησης φοιτητών, φοιτητριών και διδασκόντων δύο Τμημάτων από την Ελλάδα: Tμήμα Βιολογικών Εφαρμογών και Τεχνολογιών, Παν/μιο Ιωαννίνων και Τμήμα Γεωπονίας, Ιχθυολογίας και Υδάτινου Περιβάλλοντος, Παν/μιο Θεσσαλίας και ενός από την Ισπανία: Σχολή Θετικών Επιστημών, Πανεπιστήμιο του Cadiz. Παρακολουθούμε, σχολιάζουμε, ρωτάμε, απαντάμε σχετικά με τα πειράματά μας, τις στήλες Winogradsky!


Bienvenidos a la pagina web de los Winobloggers! Aquí los estudiantes y profesores de dos departamentos griegos, el Departamento de Aplicaciones y Tecnologías Biológicas de la Universidad de Ioannina y el Departmento de Agricultura, Ictiología y Sistemas Acuáticos de la Universidad de Thessalia, junto con los estudiantes de Microbiología de la Facultad de Ciencias en la Universidad de Cádiz, se reúnen para observar, comentar, preguntar y responder a preguntas relacionadas con nuestro experimento, la columna Winogradsky.


Winogradksy columns

Winogradksy columns
'In the field of observation, chance only favors the prepared mind' Pasteur 1854

Blog posts

Saturday 14 March 2015

Cadiz, 7B: Experiment of Winogradsky column. First week(3th -10th march)

Hello, Winobloggers:

In this blog, I talk about the observations of the Winograndsky´s column which my group are doing. We are two students of biotechnology in the university of Cadiz.

The Winograndsky´s column contains sand of the beach and mud of the river San Pedro that take up around the half of the bottle and a quarter of water from the same river. The compounds, that we added like enrichment were CaSO4, FeSO4, CaCO3 and starch. The bottle is located in a window. In this place, the sun warm up only a part of the bottle.

On Tuesday, 3th March ,The column were created in a laboratory of the university. At the beginning, the bottle have a grey colouration and the water was turbid. In the third day, we could see that there were black spots and white lines in the bottle and the water was yellow. After a few days, we observed that an orange line is formed in the walls of bottle that is in contact with the water. The mixture smells bad.

If we used these observations, we could deduce that in the column  there are :

-Cyanobacteria in the surfaces of the bottle because they are aerobics.
-Bacteria that reduces the ions sulphates of CaSO4 and FeSO4 to sulphides. They are the black spots that we can see. Other way of detected them is by the smell. The compound H2S(product of reaction) segregates a strong smell to decomposed eggs.
-Bacteria fermenting glucose because we added starch.
- Bacteria of iron that produces reaction of oxidation in this element . This type of bacteria changes the colour of water to yellow or orange and they can improve the proliferation of the reducing-sulphates bacteria.

Now, You can see the images which  we are taken along the week:
 days 1-3
                                                                days 4-7


                                                         place of the bottle

3 comments:

  1. I see you have gone all the way! Added a bit of everything. Do you remember how much you added of each?

    If you added too much of sulfates, you have made your SRB (sulfate reducing bacteria) very happy and your room mates unhappy. Just remember to keep the bottle top open.

    Let's see over the days if the ratio of orange to black zones change.

    Has anyone thought of making a photo every other day under the same light and add all the pictures together in the end? This would make a nice video of the evolution of the column. Something like a "1 sec everyday" video. I think I will make one column myself tomorrow.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I believe that we added around two spoonful of each compound.
      If we keep the top open of the bottle, wouldn´t it get contaminated?

      Delete
  2. You do not have to remove the cap completely. Alternatively, you could add some saran wrap (film transparente) to prevent excessive evaporation and contamination. If you have it too tightly closed, with too much H2S produced, the bottle could swell.

    Probably you will get some airborne microorganisms "contaminating" your column. But we never worked under aseptic conditions anyway.

    What does, in your opinion happen, in the natural environment? What is the fate of these airborne microorganisms?

    Always more questions than answers...

    Sokratis

    ReplyDelete