Microbe Mission B/C

[Ashernoel]

Out of the 29 bacterial phyla, which ones are generally tested on?

whats a phyla

[Uber]

Out of the 29 bacterial phyla, which ones are generally tested on?

None so far. xD
I'm going to use Woese's classifications because they're easier for this purpose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacterial ... b-division
- All proteobacteria divisions
- Gram positive first 2 divisions
- Cyanobacteria
- Spirochete proper
- Bacteroides proper
- Chlamydia
- Micrococcus thermophile
- Chloroflexus

[Skink]

Re: cheat sheets, mine has size three font . That's largely disease notes, though, as most of the rest is very carefully engineered diagrams, micrographs, and things. I've seen teams with cheat sheets that have 5-6 font and nearly no diagrams on both sides. Honestly, I'm not sure what most of that is or in what way it's intended to be helpful

Re: bacterial groups, what you should really be asking is what unique characteristics are out there in important genera (as phyla are pretty broad, still). And, it's less knowing them by name (though the best teams can recognize key ones if prompted) and more knowing that they're out there and what their unique characteristics are, especially against the other major microbial groups. There's a chapter on diversity in the microbio books (and it's pain if you're not prepared for it), but the reference I like for this are review tables; there's a great one in one of the review books I have. Actually, let me check what the column headings are for that: phylum, class, important genera, and significant features. This makes diversity tangible, I think, and protects you from getting stung by the weirdos. Example: "Mycoplasma species are neither Gram-positive nor Gram-negative. Explain.". A good (yet wrong) guess would be that they were acid-fast. But, that would be confusing them with the genus Mycobacterium...anyway, the best teams know that mycoplasmas lack cell walls, making the question easy to answer. If teams didn't know the mycoplasmas, specifically, but knew that bacteria existed that didn't have cell walls, it'd be doable. Stuff like that...

[fast__facts]

Div C should use more taxonomy than B right?

[Skink]

Everybody repeat after me: this is not a taxonomy event exclamation point!

I can't predict what you'll see anywhere (as my B team has seen some bizarre, wildly unfair stuff at invitationals), but the point here is not to get questions that expect you to produce names like Bdellovibrio. The point of studying diversity is so you have a grasp of what features different bacteria/archaea/eukaryotes can have, as that, then, allows you to answer questions both general and more specific. Know what things have cell walls (and their compositions). Know what things photosynthesize. Know what things have special ecological roles. Know what things tolerate what extreme environments and where. Know what things ferment what to what. Have a basic handle on unusual life cycles. And, so on...

A point I wanted to edit into my last post (but the edit button disappeared): remember that all disease questions are restricted to the list.

[Ashernoel]

Everybody repeat after me: this is not a taxonomy event exclamation point!

I can't predict what you'll see anywhere (as my B team has seen some bizarre, wildly unfair stuff at invitationals), but the point here is not to get questions that expect you to produce names like Bdellovibrio. The point of studying diversity is so you have a grasp of what features different bacteria/archaea/eukaryotes can have, as that, then, allows you to answer questions both general and more specific. Know what things have cell walls (and their compositions). Know what things photosynthesize. Know what things have special ecological roles. Know what things tolerate what extreme environments and where. Know what things ferment what to what. Have a basic handle on unusual life cycles. And, so on...

A point I wanted to edit into my last post (but the edit button disappeared): remember that all disease questions are restricted to the list.

true, but on the loyola test there was a lot of taxonomy xD even taxonomy of gut flora and more... :3

[Skink]

And, you know already how I feel about that test...though, to be fair, some of that is totally fair game, particularly the weird free-response ones. Doing activities with phylogeny/cladistics is fair game (and great, actually) provided you're given data to work with.

[Alex-RCHS]

Has anyone had to do lab-ish activities, especially at states? What were the activities? How would you prepare for them?

[Ashernoel]

Has anyone had to do lab-ish activities, especially at states? What were the activities? How would you prepare for them?

There were labs at our regional. All of the specimens have to be form the list on the rules, so know those and you are fine. Basic procedural knowledge can't hurt.

[Skink]

You can be given prepared slides or micrographs of anything, so, in that sense, it's wide open. Actual tasks are limited due to the live specimen list noted above, time constraints, and virtually no chemicals.