DISCLAIMER: This blog tackles an originally organized research study and I uploaded it for the sake of inspiration only (may it be work or academically related). I hope you all understand and enjoy reading this:)
This will serve as part one of the measures and steps we've taken to fulfill our study. I couldn't fit our research title in the heading so if you're curious, it's - Antibacterial and Cytotoxic Activities of Sugar-apple Seed Extract (Annona squamosa L.) Against Vibrio parahaemolyticus in Seawater.
I know what you might be thinking. Why is the title so long? What is the study about and why does it sound so complex? I shall leave a small overview for you guys right here to understand better.
OVERVIEW:
The study revolves around the use of plant seed, Sugar-apple (atis) as we continue to discover and research its use and effectivity (antibacterial process) in trying to save coastal/marine environments in our locality. Vibrio parahaemolyticus is one of the most common bacteria found in these ecosystems, mainly caused by the mixture of human waste disposal when in contact with seawater, including the intake of raw, uncooked food or drinking contaminated water. As you can notice, we also included the cytotoxicity part to ensure that the extract we are going to produce is environmentally safe and not a hazard or threat to marine organisms.
These are the procedures we had undergone throughout our whole journey in developing this study (halfway done yet).
Firstly, we took a stroll around the locality to find some atis trees. We had a hard time trying to look for the perfectly ripe ones, so we took even the burnt and dried ones (due to the extremely hot weather). It took us a couple of days to find them because most trees barely bore any fruit (we had to ask the locals for some). Here, we just got home after class and went to my classmate's barangay which was known to produce many of its fruits. We asked for her assistance that time and we came across many houses that had those trees, and they happily helped us out as my other groupmate carefully climbed up the tree to pick up exactly what we needed.
A few days later, we collected more than a hundred fruits (the black, dried ones combined with the green, ripe ones). We carefully took out the seeds that were inside and pounded them using various techniques:
(1) using a piece of cloth and wrapping the seeds in it while pounding them with a hammer to powderize them.
(2) we used a mortar and pestle. We needed about 400 grams and weighed it carefully until we got the amount we needed.
I'm not gonna go into much detail here anymore but we just used the lab materials we borrowed from our chemistry teacher and soaked our seeds with methanol as its medium. It had to go through many various processes before we finally came up with the extract. It took us about 2 weeks to do that.
After we had finally produced the extract, we had to travel to the city (approximately 3-5 hours from the province depending on traffic) to ask a university to examine it and perform the necessary steps needed to be undertaken such as the antibacterial assay. We also decided to get our local seawater samples checked out by the water laboratory from that university just for confirmatory purposes that the bacteria we are going to utilize in our study are present there. (P.S. We had to return 3 times and paid a gut-wrenching amount because our school laboratory did not have enough capacity and materials for us to work on our study there).
From here, we already got the results, and guess what: WE WERE SO HAPPY WHEN WE FOUND OUT THAT THE EXTRACT WORKED WONDERS! Meaning, that we can move on and continue with our study (I'll just leave out the explanation since the results are supposed to be confidential).
Our study doesn't quite end here since we still have a lot of unfinished business to deal with. Supposedly, we were going to have our final defense and research festival this year, but due to circumstances such as the heat index and several interruptions with the schedule of our research adviser (her workload is full), we needed to compromise and continue it next year. I can say that I am proud of what we have achieved right now, even if it seems so little our progress has been at an all-time high. Our study is one of those that are closest to finish and we've already gotten a positive result so we'll just see how things go from here.
Thank you so much for reading my first StemSocial-related blog, I'll see you guys on the next one! Bye bye