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
place of the bottle
I see you have gone all the way! Added a bit of everything. Do you remember how much you added of each?
ReplyDeleteIf 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.
I believe that we added around two spoonful of each compound.
DeleteIf we keep the top open of the bottle, wouldn´t it get contaminated?
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.
ReplyDeleteProbably 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