Beauty of contamination

Hi steemians! Today I would like to share with you some of my lab failures.
The microorganism I am primarily working with is the budding yeast – Saccharomyces Cerevisiae. You surely know this yeast as it is part of bread, beer or wine and thus, can be found in almost every household. After doing some experiments with yeast I need to inoculate the cells onto agar plates that contain all necessary nutrients for optimal growth. On the picture bellow you can see macroscopic as well as microscopic images of S. cerevisiae. Looks quite pretty, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, it may occur that something unwanted lands on these agar plates as well. Such as bacteria, mold, different yeast or alien from another dimension. This can ruin your experiment as well as day and many times the only option is to throw it all away and start anew. And my friends, I am truly a master of contamination. This can be many times quite frustrating, but on the other hand, beauty can be found in such contaminations. These contaminations come in different shapes and colours (and smells).

So, please sit down and enjoy this spectacular show of unwanted microorganisms.

I call these Hogwarts- coz they are magical and ugly.

Here they are under microscope and suddenly do not look that nasty. Probably some mycelium. Or alien.

These white “puddles” shouldn’t be there. But they were. Oh well…

Then this microscopic worm-weirdo. I remember that I did try to convince myself that it is nothing and will not matter. I had to throw away my results few days later.

And finally, plate-doomer. This yellow demon destroyed around 10 plates. On the other hand, it looks cute. So totally worth it.

Soooo, hopefully you did enjoy seeing my little exhibition of microscopic frustration. :D If you are young struggling scientist as well, then do not worry, it can always be worse. But remember, everything bad can be used for something good. Look at me- using my failures to write an article!

Thank you for reading! :)