Oil Clean Up Crew

Overview

Objectives/Goals My objective was to find out if the bacteria Vibrio fischeri could efficiently degrade oil. I hypothesized that Vibrio fischeri would efficiently degrade oil. Methods/Materials To conduct this experiment I used sodium chloride, yeast extract, peptone, distilled water, an autoclave, sterile test tubes, a micropipette, sterile micropipette tips, sterile swabs, agar plates, Vibrio fischeri, Pseudomonas fluorescens, a digital scale, an incubator, motor oil, and sterile syringes. I tested the Vibrio fischeri for efficient oil degradation by comparing it's growth to another bacteria's. This bacteria was called Pseudomonas fluorescens and is commonly added to oil spills to degrade oil. I then grew each bacteria in two broths, one with and one without oil. After incubating the bacteria, I performed a serial dilution and plated each group on an agar plate and incubated them. I then recorded the growth of bacteria in CFU/mL. Results Vibrio fischeri grew an average of only 55,000 CFU/mL compared to Pseudomonas fluorescens which grew an average of 825,000 CFU/mL. Conclusions/Discussion My results proved my hypothesis wrong and I discovered that Vibrio fischeri did not degrade oil as much as Pseudomonas fluorescens according to this experiment. I think Vibrio fischeri would be a great bacteria for degrading oil in the deep ocean if it were genetically engineered to consume oil.

Competition history

• CSEF 2011 Environmental Engineering (Junior Division Only) · Entry J1016

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

• All Environmental Engineering projects
• CSEF Environmental Engineering projects
• Every CSEF 2011 project