Essay On Unknown Lab

For this reflection, I’m going to specifically focus on the morphological unknown lab we used 2-3 lab periods for. Before going into lab, I started to create my own dichotomous key for all the microbial species we’ve been working on, assuming we’d have a species we previously worked on. My dichotomous key went from from gram stain to respiratory use and to fermentation results. I quickly realized that I shouldn’t have been working on this as my first go to. I mentioned in a past reflection that I was unconfident in myself to identify my unknown for this lab, and my need to create my own key was generated by this. I realize now that I should’ve used that extra time to brush up on lab techniques, why and when certain tests should be performed, how to read the results, etc. I was really hazy on the test details before going into lab, and I just rushed to perform all the tests I could on lab day 1. The following lab day when I read the results was moderately successful, and during this period I was able to expand on some of the reasonings behind each test, which greatly increased my understanding. For example, I never gave much thought about why I’d want to place gelatin in an ice bath after incubation, but now I see the answer is obvious: incubation will liquify gelatin which can give a false positive …show more content…
It’s definitely useful, but for me, if I focused on it my result would’ve been inconclusive. In my case, my MRVP tests were both negative, when one was supposed to be positive. Instead of dwelling on this set back, I decided to focus on other differences that weren’t mentioned in the dichotomous key like gelatin hydrolysis, which ultimately allowed me to determine my microbe from another. By ignoring my MRVP test results (mostly because I was pretty sure one of them was wrong) I was able to match my results with the literature results of my unknown: Enterobacter