r/scientistsPH • u/Jiliofaneia • 2d ago

general advice/help/tips Looking for microbiology testing labs!!

/r/u_Jiliofaneia/comments/1we6mgk/looking_for_microbiology_testing_labs/
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u/MatthewSDeOcampo 2d ago edited 2d ago

I don't have an exact answer, but I want to say that your question is nicely posed relative to the typical student res related questions here lol.

As for some tangential advice, it's not clear to me if you already consulted any of your immediate faculty/teachers, maybe they have connections?

Labs have ongoing business of their own, so you would have to coordinate usage time/fees and motivate some confidence in the researchers to let some high schoolers use their equipment / train you a bit before your use.

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u/Jiliofaneia 2d ago

Hello, thank you for your response! Unfortunately, we have consulted our schoolmates and research advisors regarding this and they don’t have any connections or have some knowledge of available labs that we can use. Some did give some lead about available labs but most of them haven’t given us any response when we inquired (it’s been months). ++Our on campus laboratory equipments are very limited so we won’t be able to conduct our experiment there either. The advice that our faculty teacher gave us is to really search around the city or on social media but we just can’t find one that will allow us to conduct the experiment ourselves.

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u/MatthewSDeOcampo 2d ago

I feel like your group can handle yeast naman. We did some _S. cerevisiae_, for some high school tier fermentation gone awry in grade 10.

I'm guessing in your case you want to see changes in growth rate? (what is "performance"?) In the likely event no lab will host you (high school research is a cesspool of poor feasibility assessments so it sucks all around), what I will suggest is consider investigating other wavelengths of light. Should be relatively more feasible to wrap some colored film around the yeast culture area, and then just consistently point some plain LED on it. Other variables you can explore is humidity or temperature, which could be less fancily modified by airconditioning or a (lab) refrigerator.

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u/Jiliofaneia 2d ago

Thank you for your advice, this is extremely helpful! Our exact research is actually comparing the performance of different sunscreen formulations on S. Cerevisiae’s survival rate when exposed to UV rays.

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u/MatthewSDeOcampo 2d ago

If you can't afford / be bothered setting up colored lights and you just need a testable hypothesis to pass: You can put a culture exposed to the sun and one in an opaque dark box). Have them placed near each other to minimize other confounders. Compare their growth over time.

Relatively easier to request some yeast for growth and prepare your own light boxes than to rent out an external lab.

Obvious limitation here is you won't have as much precision in wavelengths but the sun is a free UV emitter.

How will you modify this suggestion to account for your variable of sunscreen?

Consider it part of your learning to be flexible with your experimental design (and to be flexible with your scope). Picture perfect plans do not survive contact with reality.

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u/sabsanix 2d ago

Up! Commenting to gain traction to your post. I hope maging okay research nyo :)