05/11/01(Updated by Emily)-Today's procedures were once again routine- we saw no change in the rats from the second site of injections. We are planning on wrapping up this experiment within the next week, and concluding our research. Even though this experiment did not exactly turn out in the fashion that we expected, we feel that it was a success due to the knowledge of procedures that we acquired during the weeks. It is our hope that we will benefit from this knowledge in the future.
05/07/01(Updated by Emily)- With our past failure from injecting the rats with innoculated distilled water, we decided to inject them with innoculated nutrien broth in place of the water. Our reasoning for this step was the belief that the bacteria did not have any host to grow in with the injection. We realize that it would be able to live off of the rats, but we did not consider the fact that the bacteria must survive until injection and until they can grow off of the host. Due to this, we feel that by providing a host culture that they have already colonized and established themselves in, they would be able to spread and thrive in a foreign host. It is our hope that this "home base" theory provides us with much success.
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