_ HOW TO GROW BACTERIA?

Make the food! By making agar cultivation medium and pouring it in plates I created growth environments in petri dishes.

Step 1: Measure the ingredients for you cultivation medium:
(recipes cultivation media ) and pour them in a autoclavable bottle.

Step 2: Autoclave the bottle with the ingredients.
What is autoclaving? Wikipedia: An autoclave is a pressure chamber used to sterilize equipment and supplies by subjecting them to high pressure saturated steam at 121 °C (249°F) for around 15–20 minutes depending on the size of the load and the contents. So an autoclavable bottle looks something like the image on the right
It can stand high temperatures.
To pressurise the ingredients of the bottle, place the bottle in a pressure cooker. Make sure the lid is closed but not completely otherwise the bottle might burst under all the pressure. Turn the pressure cooker on and wait till it starts steaming. That’s when the pressure cooker reached high steam pressure at 121 °C. Now wait for 15-20 min, then remove from heat source. You can only open the pressure cooker when the ‘pressure pin’ is down. Don’t open the bottle! Yet. Your ingredients have been sterilised, if you were to open the bottle it wouldn’t be sterile anymore.

Step 3: So to now pour the nutrition medium into a petri-dish, a ‘sterile’ environment is needed. Different alternatives would work. 1 is a flame. The hot air of the flame does up and there fore create a sterile ‘umbrella’. The area of 30 cm around the flame is good to work in. If you don't want to work with a flame, build a sterile hood (building instructions sterile hood). Once the bottle is cold enough to grab it you can pour the medium into the petri dishes. Place a petri dish in the sterile environment. Take the bottle and open it in the sterile environment. Move the opening of the bottle through the flame to kill any bacteria on the opening. Now open lid of the petri dish a little and pour the medium. Repeat this as many times as necessary. Before closing the bottle move the opening of the bottle through the flame again.

Step 4: Once the medium has solidified you can inoculate your petridish.
In·oc·u·lat·e: introduce (cells or organisms) into a culture medium.
You do this again in the sterile environment and transfer the bacteria onto your dish. You can do this with different sterile tools. Innoculation loop, tweezers, scalpel, glas spatula. To sterilize your tools you can hold it in alcohol and then in a flame. After you did this don't put it down again, it will get contaminated again!
Now write on the petri dish (not on the lid, other side) the date, your name, the medium and what's in it.

Step 5: Now, be patient.
Place the petri dishes in the right environment such as an incubator with the right temperature.

When you want to dispose your petri dishes make sure you kill the micro-organisms. You don't want them to continue growing and certainly not if you're not sure what it is.
You can place your petri dishes in a auto clavable bag and autoclave it. Or pour bleach over it.

Biofactory canvas voor Mycelium Biofactory canvas voor Kambucha