Duty Log, Lt. Jen Lee

Stardate 9905.24

After reading Ensign Silberman's report on the Tunisian plant, Jen decides to culture the bacteria from it. She runs a microbio collector over Ensign Silberman's plant, carefully removing a portion of the bacteria from the leaves. She places her harvested bacteria into a nutrient broth, allowing the microbes to grow and divide. While the bacteria get acclimated to their new environment, Jen replaces the plant in Sarah's specialized container.

She draws up a small portion of the inoculated liquid medium, and places it under the microscope. By scanning, she finds one of the bacteria and zooms in on it. Up on the screen, she can see the rod-shaped bacterium digesting the nutrients from the broth, and using them to increase its size. After ten minutes, the bacterium begins to divide. Jen watches enraptured, as the familiar process of mitosis occurs.

Jotting down notes on a PADD about what she sees, she quickly places the bacterium in the genus Bacillus. Deciding to see what happens to the bacterium under adverse conditions, she increases the heat under the scope. Within a few seconds, the temperature rises from 25 degrees Centigrade, to 37 degrees. Since the plant was found in "room" temperature conditions, she expects the bacteria to grow well at 25 degrees. Human body temperature is approximately 37, so she wants to see how well the bacterium handle that temperature.

Giving time for the cells to grow and divide, she carefully catalogs all she can see about the change in uptake of nutrients and expulsion of waste. Overall, the bacterium grows well, though not as quickly as it did at 25 degrees. She increases the temperature to 45 degrees Centigrade.

Quite rapidly, she sees that the cell changes its rate of growth. Different nutrients are being absorbed into the cell, and cell division ceases. As she watches, she sees spores forming at the end of the cell. Within 45 minutes at the high temperature, all of the vegetative cells have resorted to spore formation and are lying dormant.

Jen turns off the scope, and prepares her report. "The main bacterium found on Ensign Silberman's plant from the planet Tunis, is most definitely in the genus Bacillus. All of its nutrient requirements are met using liquid broth media #3454 at all temperatures. Optimal growth occurs at 25 degrees Centigrade, with dual endospore formation occurring at 45 degrees Centigrade. Further testing will be required to find the conditions in which the spores are released, and grow into new vegetative cells. Barring any objections, this bacterium will have a temporary designation as Bacillus tunesius."

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