Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello! I have a science fair project that I came up with. I need some help with growing the bacteria. So my project question is:

How does light affect methanotrophic culture?

Obviously, I need to grow the methanotrophs first. However, I am not sure how to do this because I need to incubate them in CH4 and isolate them.

Please help!!!

Hi! This sounds like a really interesting project!

Can you tell me a bit more about what your current setup plan is is, and what your concerns about incubating them in CH4 is? We can work up from there!

-Rebekah

Hello! Thank you so much for answering!

I want to incubate methanotrophs but first I have to extract their pure culture. I have to perform a pre-incubation of soil (or my methanotroph source) with CH4 and then a serial dilution in order to obtain their pure cultures. Then, I need to incubate the petri dishes with the diluted sample with CH4 again. However, I am not sure how to obtain the CH4 and incubate my bacteria without an incubator.