Honors Program Theses
Title
Assessment of Key Parameters to Achieve Bacteria Transformability in E. coli and A. tumefaciens
Award/Availability
Open Access Honors Program Thesis
First Advisor
James Jurgenson
Abstract
ln this project, growth and transformability of E. coli and A. tumefaciens were investigated. The growth of the bacterial species was monitored under different key parameters including: the strain of the bacteria, the inoculum source (a fresh plate or frozen glycerol stock), and the media type. Growth was monitored by measuring the optical density (OD). Using E. coli strains Dh5a and CdB\ it was determined that the strain, the media type, and the amount of inoculum had a great effect on the growth but the source of the inoculum had little effect. For A. tumefaciens, the strain and the media type had a great effect on the growth and the source of the inoculum had a great effect for one strain's growth but little effect for the other.
Transformation is a process by which cells take up DNA from their environment. For this project, the artificial transformation process of electroporation was utilized in order to transform cells by exposing a mixture of cells and free DNA to a strong electrical field. Bacteria grown to different phases of growth under various conditions were used for electroporation and transformation efficiencies were determined. Trends that were observed included higher transformation efficiencies for the CcdBR stain than the Dh5a strain of E. coli, higher transformation efficiencies for 0.4 OD cultures than for 0.2 OD cultures, and no significant effect of the media type on transformation efficiencies. Standard deviations were too large for these results to be conclusive.
Year of Submission
2007
Department
Department of Biology
University Honors Designation
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation University Honors
Date Original
8-2006
Object Description
1 PDF file (21 pages)
Copyright
©2007 Zach Regelin
Recommended Citation
Regelin, Zach, "Assessment of Key Parameters to Achieve Bacteria Transformability in E. coli and A. tumefaciens" (2007). Honors Program Theses. 635.
https://scholarworks.uni.edu/hpt/635
Comments
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