The Research (Part II)

We've mostly been using different spices for the extracts, so every morning Jen and I have been going to a food co-op to pick basically any pure spice we'd like (things like curry powder are out because they're made with several different ingredients so it's much harder to determine which one is responsible for inhibiting microbial growth). Spices with the most intense colors tend to bring the best results, so this morning, for example, we created extracts of chili powder, paprika and sweet basil. I've found that a lot of waiting is involved in this stage of the research, because once the extracts are made and added to the bacterial cultures, the growth inhibition is measured by a spectrophotometer which gives read-outs every two hours, and since each sample is given sixty hours to grow, the research seems to move pretty slowly. The spectrophotometer, however, is kind of awesome. The lab just purchased it with the grant money, and prior to its involvement all of the growth measurements had to be done individually, which was not even remotely exciting. Now that it's here we can skip that time-consuming step and move right to the comparisons between control groups (bacterial cultures with no added extract) and experimental groups (samples with an extract). I guess I should mention that each experimental group has both a garlic extract (a known antimicrobial) and another extract added (with unknown antimicrobial potential). This is done for two reasons: 1) the garlic extract is extremely pungent, so it's best if used in smaller quantities because very few people would want to eat cheese that smelled like garlic even if it was bacteria-free, and 2) because the antimicrobial potential of garlic is known, it's possible to determine how effective the additional extract is even when the two are combined, and it also saves time because you can see if the two extracts work better together than alone without having to run a second test.