University of Thessaly, School of Agricultural Sciences, Faculty of Icthyology_Team no.31 (Papastathopoulos-Vlachakis) -Day-

Good morning,

After 22 days from the beggining of our experiment  we noticed the first significant changes in our column. The water in the bottle turned into black and, as you can see in pictures below, a white blurred substance was created at the top of our bottle

Post your photos

We have seen some nice pictures lately but also many posts without any pictures at all!

As always an image is a thousand words (old chinese proverb) so please include pictures on your posts. Even if you think there are no changes, if you put a series of photos side by side, you will definetely see the evolution of the column.

Check this post from Cadiz from last year. The best I have seen.
 http://winobloggers.blogspot.com.es/2015/04/winograndsky-column-one-month-group-1a_4.html

I think next time we can make an international competition!

Sokratis

UCA_3B-7B_3: Day 28 - A snail inside our column???

Rio San Pedro sediment + 0.20 g CaSO4 + filter paper

Column exposed to sunlight

We can now appreciate how different microorganisms have developed depending on how different the conditions were (light, O2 availability...).

First of all, let's talk about the light side. We can see how a sort of greenish colour appears due to the presence of photosynthetic organisms. In the upper part this is caused by the growth of green algae, whereas we move down, the coloration is a result of the cianobacteria more than algae. Several bubbles got trapped in the crannies of the bottle's wall (this demonstrates that photosynthesis is happening here).

On the other hand, the dark side shows black coloration. Only those microorganisms capable of obtaining energy from redow reactions grow here (these organisms are probably lithotrophic). We can find sulphurous bacteria (thanks to the sulphur hydride), oxidative bacteria (responsible of the coppery limits between the light and the dark side) and some more.

Surprisingly, we found an intruder!! There is a little snail living inside our column!


Column that developed without light

We observe how that black colour at the bottom has gotten even darker. And, just like it was two weeks ago, as we go up in our column, that black colour gradually turns to a grey that becomes a little lighter.

At the top of our column, that iron oxyde (which presented a dark orange colour) layer we spoke about the last time got even thicker.

The water layer has not changed on the past two weeks.

Stay tuned for more news!

UCA_8A_3: Day 35

Rio San Pedro sediment + 0.5g FeSO4 + filter paper

Our column doesn't show any changes, it keeps the same black colour and we can't see any living beings yet. 

UCA_3B-7B_2: Day 14 - Let there be life.

Rio San Pedro sediment + 0.20 g CaSO4 + filter paper

Let's have a look at the column that has been exposed to light.

We can perfectly tell apart the side of the bottle that has been exposed to sunlight from the one that has not.

In the lower region, a blackish colour can be seen due to the precipitation of iron sulphide (product of iron oxidation in the presence of hydrogen sulphide coming from the CaSO4.

Halfway up, in the area exposed to light, aerobic microorganisms have not had enough time to fully develop. However, at the top are what appear to be small green algae. They grow in this area because they have sunlight and oxygen at their disposal. But, they are not yet prepared to grow in intermediate zone due to hydrogen sulphide.

Meanwhile, the column that has not been exposed to light at all...

The Rio San Pedro sediment lies now at the bottom of the column and in the superior part of the column, there is approximately two inches of water. The bottom has a darker colour than the rest of the bottle. This is due to the presence of iron sulphide that comes from the activity of anoxygenic bacteria. The middle part of the column has a grey color with black dots.

On the part at the top of the column (let's remind that this part is just water) we can distinguish traces of iron oxyde, which possess a copper-bright orange colour. The reason that this compound appears is that some oxygen can penetrate through the bottle's plastic.




Stay tuned for more on our columns!

UCA_1B_1: Day 1: What a wonderful bottled world

Hey! We are a group of students from University of Cádiz who is going to do a tracking of a winogradsky column and take notes of the changes that will appear in it for the subject of microbiology.

Our winogradsky column only contains sediments from San Pedro river and tap water.

Firstly, we add enough sediment to fill 2/3 of a transparent bottle. We remove the big solids from the sediment and mix it with water in order to make it more fluid. The other 1/3 is filled with water.

We make sure the air bubbles among the sediment go to the surface, and we let the lid slightly opened to allow the air to enter.

Once prepared, our column was kept in a dark place while other column with the same content was put next to a window for it to receive sunlight.

What are we expecting to happen? Maybe only chemoautotrophs and chemoheterotrophs organisms will evolve... We will see.

To be continued.

UCA_6B_1: Day 0 – Creation of the column

Rio San Pedro sediment + 1g CaSO₄

For the preparation of our column we take a bottle and use the Rio San Pedro mud as the sediment and we added 1 grams of CaSO₄ to the bottle. We add some water too to recreate aquatic conditions. We close it and put it in a box so the light couldn’t penetrate through. That will allow the growth of chemosynthetic organisms in the column.

We suppose that in the top of the column aerobic organisms will grow as the concentration of the oxygen is higher, while in the bottom of the column the conditions will be the opposite, so anaerobic organisms will grow.

Another hypothesis is that in the deeper parts of the column the sulphur will be accumulated and microorganisms able to metabolize it will proliferate, however in the surface will be just the opposite as the concentration of the sulphur will be very low.

With this information, we could affirm that the column will be differenced in three zones: the aerobic zone, the microaerophilic zone and the anaerobic zone. The addition of CaSO₄ will stimulate the growth of the microorganisms.

University of Thessaly, School of Agricultural Sciences, Faculty of Icthyology_Team no.6 (Zindrili-Egglezou) -Darkness-

Good evening,

  we are Zindrili Rodanthi and Egglezou George and as a team we conducted the experiment of Winogradsky's Column without light (microorganisms increased under darkness). For the experiment we used a plastic bottle, from which we had cut the bottleneck so that we could insert the mud with the pieces of newspaper, an egg with its shell and the additional nutrient. The mud we used was from Anauros, a shore near the city of Volos and the additional nutrient was molasses (= thick sugar syrup derived by grapes). We present the results with the following pictures :

Monday 21/3/2016 (1st day of the experiment)

Thursday 31/3/2016 (10nth day of the experiment, picture taken from the top of the bottle)

Thursday 31/3/2016 (10nth day of the experiment)

 The water that we had added after the preparation of the nutritional substrate after 10 days time turned into yellow. By that we can assume that there was an increase of population of sulphur bacteria. 

UCA_8&4B_2- 5th Week:Column Intensifies

We are back after five weeks and we are reporting some changes to the column:

Dark Column: An increasing of the color intensity is noticeable when we see both column photos together. This may be a consequence of bacteria development, as a of microorganism concentration.

As said before, we can see an intensification of colors. The orange, water ring is much more relevant now, and the bottom is noticeably darker, as an increasing of bacteria concentration.

Light column: After two weeks, water has become murky and mollusk had apeeared. In the middle of the column orange colour has increased a lot because Fe (II), produced by bacteria that consume Fe (III), reacts with oxygen, produced by new cyanobacteria that has grown. Besides, we notice anoxygenic part because iron oxide hasn´t been produced in this part but sulfure-bacteria grow. Finally, in the bottom of the bottle we find totally anoxygenic zone where we can find sulfure-bacteria.

Universidad de Cádiz_GrupoB4B7_Entry3 : Day 28

Good afternoon,

In our bottle, we can watch, making a comparision with the first day, the level of the water has increased due to that the number of seaweed has increased too. In addition the water is a little more cloudy now.

At the bottom of the bottle, we can appreciate that the darck color previous it is disappearance now. If we are going to the top, we find with an orange color, which is due to the existences of the oxidative iron bacterians. This color decreases towards brown colors. In this zone we can find some cianobacterians, which has expelled gases to form little holes.

In the lateral of the bottle, we find oxidative iron bacterians owing to his color , which is orange.

In the part  of the bottle were the light doesn’t influence we watch from the bottom to the top a dark blue color, which shows us that three is matter.

Besides, we watch in the middle that there is iron (III) due to his color. In this zone we can check that the number of cianobacterians have increased of the size due to his green color has increased too.

If we compare our bottle with the other bottle which was in the darkness, we can watch that their water has increased the level too. The cloudy is the same that the last day. It is owing on to carbon dioxide.

At the top, we can go on observing a little of oxide iron layer.

Under this layer, which has increased a little we observe greys colors due to organic matter.

Near to the bottom and this zone, we see a dark color with some black lines and points.

The bottle on the left is the one about which the light has influenced. However, the bottle on the right is the one about which the darkness has influenced