Lab 5 Review - Soil

Question 1

What is acclimation? How would the microbial population in a pristine soil be affected when a contaminant like gasoline is introduced?

Answer 1

Part 1) Cells must adapt to a new physiological environment eg. produce new enzymes to catabolize a new carbon and energy source
Part 2) Degraders increase until the contaminant degraded. Overall population increases. Diversity decreases

Question 2

Starting with soil as your source of inoculum in the lab, how would you isolate a pure bacterial culture capable of degrading pentachlorophenol?

Answer 2

Enrichment culture using phenol as sole source of carbon and energy followed by solid culture (agar) with the same medium composition as the enrichment