Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi! Johanna Ljungberg is my name, and I´m a biomedical student from Sweden.

I´m currently working on isolating bioluminescent bacteria. The goal of the project is to isolate a specific species of bacteria, and then send samples of it for sequencing to prove that the bacteria I´ve obtained truly is the one I believed I had.

So far I have managed to isolate luminescent bacteria from herring, sea bass, and squid. Now I need to perform biochemical tests to sort out what the species are. The problem is I have no idea how to do this. Does anyone have any suggestion on biochemical tests that might help me sort out different species of bioluminescent bacteria?

Kind regards, Johanna

Hi Johanna Ljungberg,

I’ve found an abstract that seems to share the same purpose of your experiment, here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16499620 . It suggests the use of Amplified Ribosomal DNA Restriction Analysis to identify the various types of bioluminescent bacteria. Other types of bacterial identification you may want to look into include Real Time PCR and Microarray.

Good luck with your experiment!
~Catherine

Hi Johanna,

This is a really great project and it sounds like you already have obtained some good results.

Catherine has given you advice for the most up-to-date method of identifying these bacteria. It would probably be necessary to send your samples out to a lab unless you have access to a molecular biology lab for this type of analysis.
If you want to use traditional techniques like Gram stain, colony morphology, motility, etc., you can also refer to the following article:

http://globalresearchonline.net/journal ... 6-2/59.pdf

Please notice that the bioluminescent bacteria were identified to genus level as Vibrio or Pseudomonas and it was not possible to identify the species.

Let us know if you have any other questions.

Donna Hardy