Genetics Sourdough Experiment

  WHAT'S THE POINT IN ALL THIS DNA SEQUENCING?     Now that I've finished growing my starters and I've turned in samples of each of them for DNA sequencing, its time to get an even closer look at what made these starters behave in the way they did. Before we can hop into this though, it's important to understand why DNA sequencing is important.     One of the broader purposes of this experiment is to gather data to determine if certain fruit starters grow faster/slower than our control starters and/or other groups of fruits.       Now, it's important to understand that a starter isn't made up of a single organism, rather it a whole community of microbial organisms, meaning that the smell, texture, etc. that were describe isn't for just one organism, but rather a plethora of organisms.     DNA sequencing will enable us to determine what types of microbes are the most common in which starters. Once we are able to determine t...

  THE END OF A YEASTY JOURNEY  (SEPTEMBER 14TH-21ST, 2020):        The last week of growing my sourdough starters was a journey in its own way, but not because there were any real challenges. In fact, all of my sourdough starters this week were still consistent  with the results of last week (they were all brownish-white in color, they all smelled fermented (yeasty), and they each rose every day) .     The most adventurous part of this week was the fact that I made a second batch of each of the sourdough starters by taking out a scoop from the old starter (as I usually do each time I feed them) and then putting them each in their own new cup. I then fed them, alongside my original starters, with 1.5 scoops of flour and 1 scoop of water for a span of three days (I started on Friday, September 11th, 2020 and finished at 12:48 AM on Monday, September 14th, 2020).      On Monday, September 14th, 2...

A SMOOTHER ROAD TO GROWING YEAST: DAYS 10-14 (SEPTEMBER 6TH-10TH, 2020):            In my previous blog post, I had to break the first week-and-a-half up into multiple different subsections due to the fact that I was constantly changing factors of the experiment, such as how frequently I was feeding them, how much I was feeding them, etc. However, over the past week (September 6th - September 10th), growing my starters has become so much easier. I've recorded very similar observations each day, with each starter smelling yeasty (fermented), each appearing to have a brownish-white color, each appearing to have risen each day, and each having no liquid layer when I observe them. The rise of the yeast - This photo was taken on Day 14, September 10th, 2020 at 2:40 PM. From left to right, you can see (1) control 1, (2) peach 1.1, and (3) lemon 1.2. This was before I fed my starters for that feeding time and it shows how the starter...

Hello! I'm back at it again with more updates on my sourdough starters! Recently, they have been doing pretty well. They seem to be rising everyday and whenever I mix them up, they each look like their own sort of dough. But, before I can hop more into how they're currently doing, I'm going to be discussing their first week or so of life and something I definitely failed to recognize for quite some bit of time. THE FOUL SMELLS OF DAYS 2-3  (AUGUST 29TH AND 30TH, 2020):     To start off, I should note that I considered the day I started my experiment to be Day 1. Day 2 was the first time I "fed" my starters since starting them. These first couple of days, my peach starter and my control starter both developed a foul smell. On August 29th, 2020 at 7:31 PM, I noted that my peach starter had a bodily smell, like that of sweaty socks. I also noted that the smell made me physically gag. On August 30th, 2020 at 8:23 PM, I noted that the control starter had also developed...