Team:British Columbia/Notebook/Week 19

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Team: British Columbia - 2011.igem.org


Week 19: Oct 9-15

Mountain Pine Beetle and Saccharomyces cerevisiae Co-culturing

Ubcigembeetleexp1.jpg
We ran the beetle transfer experiments not only with the mountain pine beetle, but also with the white pine weevil. Here we are getting the beetles from a generous benefactor

Ubcigembeetleexp3.jpg The White Pine Weevil

Ubcigembeetleexp5.jpg
Next came the fun part! We followed the beetle transfer protocol (see 'protocols'), transferring the beetle to the yeast plates, followed by placing them on a clean plate. After growing the plates (there was a lot of contamination), we analyzed the resultant yeast colonies to check for GFP and clonat resistance.

Ubcigembeetleexp6.jpg The deadly Mountain Pine Beetle!

Ubcigembeetleexp8.jpg The MPB on a yeast plate.

Ubcigembeetleexp7.jpg
The beetles appeared to try to get the yeast off their backs by rolling around.

Ubcigembeetleexp2.jpg
We noticed a brown spot on one of the beetles, and wanted to get a closer look. It turned out to be nothing, but then we heard we might see a mite! Alina searched long and hard for a mite, and found this beauty on one of the beetles.

Dung beetles

Ubcigembeetleexp4.jpg
After playing with the beetles, we had beetle-shaped cupcakes.

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