Part 1: During lab you are given directions to prepare a wet mount of your cheek
ID: 282193 • Letter: P
Question
Part 1: During lab you are given directions to prepare a wet mount of your cheek cells. You are to use a simple stain (methylene blue) to ensure you can view the cells under the microscope.
Part 2: of the lab exercise is to stain unknown bacteria and view it under a microscope. You are told to use the gram staining method.
Questions to consider in the discussion forum (your main post should be posted by Thursday and should be the first post)
Why is the simple stain used in part 1 and the gram staining method used in part 2?
Describe how you would prepare each slide (part 1 and part 2).
Describe what you may see when using each staining method
Post a picture of an example of each stain in your main post.
Please no handwritten or picture replies - only typed responses.
Explanation / Answer
The simple stain is used in part1 because human cheek cells are eukaryotic cells. All eukaryotic cells can be observed by using simple stain.
In second part gram stain is used in order to identify the gram positive and gram negative bacteria.
In part1 human cheek cells are scraped out using the head of a tooth pick then transferring them on to a glass slide and then staining them using simple staining method with methylene blue stain.
In gram staining initially the bacteria are stained using a primary stain of whose colour is purple. Then later with a counter stain which is in violet colour.
In simple staining method all the cells appear in the colour of the stain.
In gram staining, the gram positive bacteria appear purple and the gram negative bacteria appear violet in colour.