HS023 – Mysterious swollen L. tarentolae (or budding yeast?)

Submitted by Hannah Sparks

This experiment is to perform a count of L. tarentolae that was made by B. Crane (refer to BC011). Upon initial observation, the parasites seemed to be lethargic and round. It appeared that they might be budding yeast due to the daughter cells budding from the parent cells were smaller. In order to determine if they were budding yeast or parasites, I aspirated the media from the Flask and added fresh media and let them sit in the incubator overnight. The next time they were observed they still did not appear to be normal parasites.  However, due to the appearance that they might have flagella, we were unable to conclude that they were budding yeast. Dr. Graff also reasoned that the parasites might have been swollen due to hypotonic conditions where the BHI being only half as concentrated as normal.