Simple Staining Lab Report

This experiment is about the microscopic techniques which let us to handle the microscope wisely. The first way to observe our sample or specimen is by using lower power first, then followed by the higher power lens. The most important precaution step is do not touch the glass part of the lenses with our finger as our body produce oil that will smudges the glass. Moreover, after using the higher power lens (100x magnification), used only lens paper to clean the glass.

Preparing of slide is needed to do slide observation. There were two slides prepared; simple stain slide and gram stain slide. A stain is a chemical compound used to enhance the visibility of a microscopic object or organism because bacterial cells are usually colourless; the

E.Coli and Bacillus sp. are used as sample in simple staining. Methylene blue is used in simple stain as a blue colour dye which makes bacterial cell blue colour. This enable cells become more visible under microscope. In simple stain, both gram negative and gram positive bacterial cells are blue colour as effects of methylene blue. Under the microscope, we observed that both are blue in colour as we stained it by using methylene blue. We also observed that, E.Coli and Bacillus sp. are bacilli or rod- shaped bacteria.

Smearing is done by extracting a colony of bacteria and put in in a drop of water. Smearing helps to separate a cluster of bacteria into one by one. It also sticks bacteria fix on the slide which able sample not to be lost during staining. This makes observation of slide and proceed of simple staining or gram staining become easier.

Gram staining is useful in detecting gram positive bacteria and gram negative bacteria. Gram positive bacteria is different from gram negative bacteria. Gram positive bacteria have thick peptidoglycan cell wall but gram negative bacteria have thin peptidoglycan layer