FMARS Sponsors	Biology Report 8 - 24 July, 2002 by Shannon Hinsa In this report I am going to talk about the bacteria cultured from samples collected during EVA 11. During this EVA, Frank, Nell, Markus and I traveled to Trinity Lake and Cabin Rock. Both of these sites contain breccia, which was of interest to us. A non-geologist's definition of breccia is rock that looks like cement, it is made up of various sizes of broken rocks fixed together, in this case by calcite. The breccia was formed after the impact of the meteor into the Haughton Crater. The breccia consists of rocks, which were affected by the impact, in this case dolomite and limestone. (Click Image to Enlarge) Figure 1 - Cabin Rock Figure 2 - Cabin Rock Figure 3 - Trinity Lake Figure 4 - Trinity Lake Cabin Rock is a 5 meter in diameter boulder of breccia that is sitting on a limestone scree. This rock is interesting because there is no other breccia around it so it is proposed to either have been dropped by a glacier or rolled down from another location. I collected two samples from each site. The samples collected from cabin rock are in fig. 1 and fig. 2, these samples were collected by chipping from the large boulder. The green band seen in fig. 1 and 2 was not on the exposed surface but on the surface that was in contact with the rest of the rock. The first sample from Trinity Lake is a rock that was broken to reveal the green banding seen in Fig. 3. The rock pictured in Fig. 4 was just pulled from the ground and it contained green spots (seen on the right edge of the rock) on the submerged surface. All of these samples were inoculated into the standard set of media and incubated for two days. (Click Image to Enlarge) Figure 5 Figure 6 Figure 7 Figure 8 Observations were made of wet mounts and grams stains of these cultures and are listed in table 1. Representative figures of the gram stains are also included. It is interesting to note that samples taken from the same site contained different bacteria, particularly seen when looking at the Pseudomonas media. I will summarize all of the findings in a summary report. Table 1. Observations Cabin Rock #1 Cabin Rock #2 Trinity Lake #1 Trinity Lake #2 Growth in TSB, pH ++, 7 +++, 5 +, 7 +++, 7 Wet Mount Small rods/cocci in pairs Cocci, short rods, some cell clusters Few small c shaped cells Rods of various sizes, some quite long Gram Stain Gram(+) cocci Gram(+) cocci/short rods No cells obvious Mix of gram(+) and gram (-) rods FIG 7 Growth in Pseud., pH +++, 7.5 ++, 7.5 ++, 8 +++, 7 Wet Mount Motile rods, plump non motile rods Small rods/cocci in pairs Small rods/cocci in pairs Motile rods Gram Stain Gram(-) rodsFIG 5 Mixed staining of cocci FIG 6 Gram (-) rods and gram(+) cocci FIG 8 Gram(-) rods Growth in Cyanno., pH +/-, 6 +/-, 6 +/-, 6 +/-, 6.5 Wet Mount Very small rods, motile Very few small rods Nothing Few small motile rods Gram Stain Very small rods, probably gram (-) Very small gram(-) rods Did not observe No cells obvious
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