pGLO Lab Observations. Data Recording, and Analysis

1. Obtain your team plates. Observe your set of “+pGLO” plates under room light and with UV light. Record numbers of colonies and color of colonies. Fill in the table below.

2. What two new traits do your transformed bacteria have?

They are resistant to ampicillin and they glow in the presence of arabinose sugars.

3. Estimate how many bacteria were in the 100 uL of bacteria that you spread on each plate. Explain your logic.

I estimate that there were approximately 5,000 bacteria in the 100uL.

There were around 80 colonies in the +pGLO LB/amp plate. Since bacteria are very very small, I'd assume that there were a billion of them in one of each colony, making that plate have approximately 80 billion bacteria.

However, since there was LB on the plate, which bacteria feed off of, I think it is reasonable that there would be more bacteria at the end, as they would have been able to reproduce. However, since there was only 250 uL of LB in each plate, I think it is very possible that the bacteria ran out of food. For sake of simplicity, I assumed that the LB lasted for a day (24 hours) and the bacteria were able to reproduce once an hour.

Since bacteria reproduce exponentially, there were originally 80 billion divided by 2 to the 24th power, or approximately 5,000 bacteria.

4. What is the role of arabinose in the plates?

The arabinose triggers the green florescent protein, causing the bacteria to glow under UV light.

5. List and briefly explain three current uses for GFP (green fluorescent protein) in research or applied science.

One of the uses for GFP in research is bacterial transformation. The pGLO plasmid, which is transferred to bacteria, is a good example of bacterial transformation, as it is very easy to tell if the bacteria have received the pGLO plasmid. Using knowledge gained from this, scientists can do other experiments involving bacterial transformation.

Another use for GFP is that it could make specific cells glow. For example, GFP could be given to a certain cell, and then you would be able to see all the cells that had grown from that one, because they would also have inherited the GFP.

Finally, GFP can be used to genetically modify animals so they glow. As GFP has been shown to work on bacteria, it makes sense that GFP would also be able to work on other animals.

6. Give an example of another application of genetic engineering.

An example of genetic engineering is cloning. Cloning is a process that can create an organism that is identical to an already existing one through genetic engineering. Cloning could help save endangered species.