S-STEM Scholar Kassandra Barrera's Blog

Last week our team already started the incubation on only Plastics 4 and 5, only because our Plastic 3 was contaminated with some sort of mold. We had to treat it 3 times, and then finally it was fully treated. This issue has brought our incubation process some delays because we have already started the other incubations before the other plastics. It is not that big of a deal, but it just puts us behind a little. That is fine it gives us time and separation when we have to separate the different plastics in different times, they will not be all at once. Hopefully, tomorrow we will finally have plastic #3 incubated with the different types of Pseudomonas and this will initiate the start of all the biodegradations steps started.

Before the spring break started the goal was to get a set of fresh new plastics treated and disinfected. So the Friday before the spring break we grated as much plastic as possible, and we even had some people donate some plastics for our project because the drill we used was having some issues. We then drained them in 100% isopropanol and let them air dry inside the hood to allow them to be ready for after the break. When we came back the plastics were then tested on PIA plated to see if there was any contamination in them before we could start the incubation process. Plastic #3 did show signs of slight contamination so they were treated one more time to see if we could get rid of it and actually start our next step next week.

Now that the WAESO conference is out of the way, our group can now focus on the next step of our project. Our biggest project now is starting the biodegradation process with our different types of microplastics and  Pseudomonas species.  Before we started any measuring, some preparation had to be done. We must shred more plastics to work with and we decided to incubate a fresh set of  Pseudomonas species. After all the preparation is completed then we can start the biodegradation process and we will finally get to measure if the different types of Pseudomonas species can aid in the biodegradation of microplastics in water. This experiment will consist of a lot of variables and patience, but I am hoping, in the end, it will be worth it.