Figure 1: Our group's research process 1.Reflect on your research process throughout this course, tell us about your research.

2. How has your critical thinking developed during the 14 weeks?

Figure 2: Our group's timeline from week 4 to week 13

Figure 3: The controls that were performed for the various tests

Figure 4: (a) Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of Staphylococci (b) Staphylococci haemolyses on blood agar (c) SEM of S. aureus (d) Mannitol Salt Agar (MSA) plate (e) Nutrient Agar (NA) plate (f) Blood Agar (BA) plate (g) Hugh & Leifson media uninoculated (h) Hugh & Leifson media showing glucose fermentation (i) Hugh & Leifson media showing oxidative reaction (j) Catalase positive reaction shown on S. aureus (k) Negative and positive fermentation of mannitol in MSA plates

Figure 5: A summary of our group's resource use throughout the each Eposter version Our critical thinking about the dynamics of our group work has changed, and conversely our work together as a group catalysed the strong progress made in our critical thinking. Initially we had a contract and had set out a timeline to follow. The work was not assigned to individuals but encouraged to be worked on by all, and individual research would be put together and collated into the e-poster. Furthermore we assessed each other's work prior to adding it to the e-poster. This process allowed everyone to critically analyse and absorb all the information we had collected about Staphylococcus. As with all group work, some will do more than others, and this group is no different. Although different roles were not assigned they were taken upon by individuals, such as some people doing diagrams and others doing editing. However as a whole we have achieved our aims, despite setbacks along the way, such as most of us not finding Staphylococcus colonies in our samples. As discussed in our group's e-poster version 2, our contract has held its purpose, but it would have been better if it had been amended to reflect our progress. For example the use of WebCT for evaluation did not work, nor did we use this aspect of our contract from the start. However we did change the method of distribution of work for the final poster, dividing the group up, to focus on specific sections, as we believed this would better achieve our goals. Group collaboration played an important part in the development of our critical thinking. It allowed us to objectively evaluate and assess different theories and proposals based on research and inter-group communication. Any individual was able to contribute their thoughts and discoveries to the group, and this led other group members down new avenues in their own work and research.

Figure 6: Our method in comparing and contrasting 2 other Eposter

Figure 7: Scanning Electron Micrograph of Staphylococcus epidermidis (source: http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/hardin/md/cdc/staph/sem1.html) 3.If you had more time to continue this work, what would you propose to do? Justify your decision by applying what you have learned conceptually and experimentally in this course. At this point in time, our group is determined to complete the remainder of our isolation plan and also to increase our knowledge of microbiological concepts relating to our genus which we have not yet thoroughly researched on. The main concerning ideas that our group would have undertaken if time were permitted, are the following: 1. To identify staphylococci in the isolations gained by members of our group down to species level. The evolution of microorganisms into different species occurs through natural selection and mutation. Apart from spontaneous evolution, evolution of species occurs to allow more beneficial and competitive alleles to be expressed amongst the population. The isolation plans down to species are shown in the following flow charts (figures 9 and 10). Due to the limitation of resources in this class, our group will use the isolation plan that is shown in figure 9 as our main isolation plan down to the species level (the test used in figure 9 are the tests that we have in our lab). However, if all the biochemical tests that we need were accessible, the isolation plan in figure 10 would be a much more preferable choice as the main plan in which more species would be identifiable than the plan in figure 9. The identification of staphylococci down to species level may also help to identify the different phenotypes present amongst the different species in the environment, although this would require a large amount of theory to reinforce it. 2. Some of the members of our group could not isolate staphylococci from the proposed sources. For this reason, it would be interesting for our group to be able to identify the genus (and possibly even the species) of these organisms. Doing so would be advantageous to our understanding of a larger variety of bacterium, and would also provide extra opportunities to enhance our laboratory skills. 3. The relationship between staphylococci and other microorganisms (i.e. microbial symbiosis) has not been deeply researched and it is a poorly understood area. It would therefore be an interesting area for our group to spend more time researching and designing experiments as microbial symbiosis is a very important relationship in the natural world. It may determine the environment of an organism, how fast replication occurs, how often it replicates, its magnitude of optimum metabolism, etc. If staphylococci does indeed have a symbiotic relationship with other microorganisms, it would be interesting to investigate the degree of dependency on this relationship. This could be done by isolating staphylococci and its symbiont through certain biochemical processes (to determine those tests best suited for use in isolating both tests would require a greater understanding of their relationship however) and then re-measuring the time of staphylococci to replicate. In addition, we would also love to study the ability of staphylococci to tolerate the changing temperature, pressure, pH, oxygen concentration, availability of water, genus of symbionts, chemical exposure, radiation, and light exposure in the living environment. This could tell us where staphylococci favours in growing and at the same time the relationship with other microorganisms and their response to the environment. Eventually, it might end up telling us why staphylococci are found where they are today and why. Also it may provide a stepping stone towards treatment of staphylococci sicknesses. 4. Our group would also like to learn more about our microorganism's metabolism, physiology and even, to a certain extent, their anatomy. However, study of the anatomy of staphylococci would require more powerful microscopes - electron microscopes - and we currently have access to only light microscopes. This would obviously hamper our ability to explore this area. To figure out their metabolic activities, we will have to grow staphylococci with different metabolic sources or chemicals. This can be linked up with their physiology. In addition, our group thought that we should grow staphylococci in varying conditions in order to understand their physiology such as how they function differently in stress and in mild and favouring environments. 5. If our group had more time we would prefer to repeat our experiment several times. This is because there is a possibility that we may have accidently contaminated our samples with staphylococci, or even missed any staphylococci that was present in our samples. Repetition is particularly important when dealing with possible contamination by staphylococci, as it is so widely prevalent on human skin. Repetition is also important to ensure the validity of our conclusions. In addition, we can also repeat the whole experiment starting from resampling in order to produce the estimation of the possibilities of finding staphylococci in the environment and where they are normally found. Finding a place where staphylococci dominate could provide us a spot to start researching why staphylococci favours that environment. This in turn can be used to produce a graph of the probability in finding staphylococci in those environments. Furthermore, we propose that if we had further time to continue this work we should conduct some tests that we did not have time to do. The tests could not be performed due to the limitation of supplies of testing such as the coagulase test. In doing that we could again validate our conclusions. 6. We will conduct the controls for all biochemical tests that we did to ensure their accuracy, as we have learnt that using organisms grown on certain media can produce false results. One such example is that a catalase test performed on an organism that was grown on blood agar is likely to give a false positive. Controls play a critical step in maintaining accuracy. At this moment, we have already conducted some controls. However, we have not completed all the controls for example the tests that we used in order to identify staphylococci down to species level. Therefore, if we had more time, we would conduct these controls to maintain accuracy down to species level. 7. Our group also would like to learn more about the microbial relatives and ancestors of staphylococci, as this can provide a great deal of information relevant to the microorganism. However, this aspect is very complicated and requires DNA strands of staphylococci which is above the scope of this course. 8. Another issue is that our group would want to improve the Group Contract in order to run the experiment more efficiently and also more cooperatively. At the moment our contract has been modified for improvements. We have divided the group for the completion of this e-poster by allocating certain members to questions. Of course, should the need arise further improvements could be arranged for optimal results for the benefit of the group.

Figure 8: Identification plan for genus Staphylococcus Catalase Test  Click here to download a plug-in.

Figure 9: Isolation plan for positive/negative Mannitol Fermentation staphylococci. This is the plan of the limiting biochemical tests that were used in the microbiology laboratory with their diagrams on the right

Figure 10: Isolation plan for coagulase positive/negative staphylococci. This is the test that our group would have used if we were not faced with the limitations of resources (biochemical tests), and time. Acknowledgements Special thanks to Dominic for the great and enthusiastic teaching and the great assistance which helped us produce this E-poster and at the same time learning the way of microbiology in this course and in the outside world. Special thanks to Kathy. T, John. E. Wilson, Paul. M, Andrew .C, Suhelen. E and Margaret. C for their terrific lectures that provided us with great ideas/information that was taken into consideration while developing this E-poster. Also a special thanks to Greg for his ongoing help in providing us with the resources for our experiments.