Stain gets on everything..

Today in lab we did the endospore stain and acid-fast stain. Both stains required to be performed over a boiling beaker of water on a heating plate. We fixed two smears and placed them on top of the beaker to heat. We placed bibulous paper over the slide and covered it with the correct stains for each procedure. Because it was heated we needed to make sure the slide did not dry. This used a lot of stain.

The endospore stain showed that our unknown does have endospores because the spores took up the green stain.

Our unknown didn't take up the acid-fast stain because our bacteria's cell walls don't contain the mycolic acid that is able to hold the red stain. The acid-alcohol washed away the red stain and allowed the blue stain to hold.

This lab got a little messy and we ended up having a little fun while everyone else finished their stains. (We were lucky enough to get to a heating plate before everyone else.)