The following sites provide lesson plans on bacterial growth experiments (testing everyday samples for bacterial growth on plates):
BioInteractive
Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s virtual lab on culturing every day bacteria (does not require plates and agar materials)
Video lectures (~25-45 minutes) that demonstrate or discuss topics mentioned in this BLOSSOMS lesson from the Midsummer Nights Science series at the Broad Institute:
Catching a Summer Bug: Dyann Wirth, PhD
How can measles be making a come-back? How did West Nile virus get from Africa to Arlington? Dyann Wirth retraces the steps of infectious diseases, and shows how researchers are using genomics to prevent future epidemics.
Robots versus Disease: Anne Carpenter, PhD
Robotic microscopes can produce millions of images a day, bringing human, animal and even bacterial cells into a close-up view. The challenge is to sort through this mountain of biological information to uncover meaningful results. Anne Carpenter will describe how biologists can train computers to "look" at images and learn to find cells displaying rare and unusual characteristics, thereby enabling research on diseases like cancer and tuberculosis.
Moving Molecules to Man: Robert Gould, PhD
How do scientists make new drugs? How does the process work and how do universities, companies and the government interact along the way? Will the deeper knowledge of human genetics change how drugs are discovered? Robert Gould will discuss the steps from understanding the biology of a potential drug to gaining approval to sell it, and how the process might be different in the future.
A Race Against Resistance: Deb Hung, MD, PhD
At every turn, it seems there is another report of dangerous bacteria outwitting the antibiotics designed to kill them. Scientists have been racing to find new antibiotics but alarmingly, progress has been slow, with few new antibiotic classes discovered in the past forty years. Deb Hung will describe how new genomic technologies may enable the discovery of new antimicrobial therapies, thereby helping to turn the tide against drug-resistant bacteria.
