Mannitol Agar Lab Report

There are bacteria everywhere. Bacteria is on everything that we touch, eat, and is in our own bodies. We cannot see them with just the naked eye, it takes a microscope to be able to see them. Even though they are visible through a microscope, it is not possible to tell what they are. Two ways that we can identify bacteria is by using agars and staining. The agars that are used in this lab are eosin methylene blue agar (EMB), mannitol agar, and nutrient agar.
Mannitol agar is used for identifying bacteria that fall under the Staphylococcus genus (Beaver, L et al. Mannitol Salt Agar). This agar has a very high concentration of salt which is a good environment for the growth of Staphylococcus bacteria only (Beaver, L et al. Mannitol Salt Agar). The next agar that is used is EMB. EMB is a good agar for recognizing E. coli (Beaver, L et al. Eosin Methylene Blue Agar) E.coli ferments a lot of sugars which reacts really well with the EMB and produces a very noticeable green color (Beaver, L et al. Eosin Methylene Blue Agar). The final agar that is used is the nutrient agar. Nutrient agar is used to cultivate a wide variety of bacteria (Parker, J et al. Nutrient Agar Plate). Nutrient agar works so well because of the nutrients that reside in it (Parker, J et al. Nutrient Agar Plate). Amino acids and minerals are a couple of the nutrients in …show more content…
aureus) and Escherichia coli (E. coli). A test done by the instructor that involves mannitol agar and EMB contained S. aureus and E. coli respectively. The instructor gathered their samples from a soda machine and a keyboard for a computer. All of the objects that were sampled by both the instructor and group are used on a day to day basis by multiple people. It is to be expected that S. aureus and E. coli will also be on the samples that were collected from the steering wheel and the gear