Where to find materials and reagents:

Working with microbes can present a challenge in terms of the reagents and equipment used. In many cases items can be obtained from a local drug or grocery story, particularly for simple experiments analyzing biochemical activity. To directly culture bacteria from environmental or other sources required use of solid media. Agar-based plates are the recommended standard. Though gelatin also acts to solidify a liquid culturing broth, it is frequently messy and will not maintain a solid support for species of microbes able to digest gelatin, of which there are quite a few. Scientific Supply Houses specialize in providing sterile microbiological media, though materials can sometimes be expensive. Common suppliers include Carolina Biological Supply, vWR, Fisher Scientific, and Sigma-Aldridge Chemicals. Most companies require that you have or open an account with them, in which case check if your school has such an account.

Reagent	Use	Where to Find
Safety Gear
Latex gloves	Protect your hands while handling bacteria or contaminated materials	Drug store
Lab Coat/Smock	Protect your clothing	Medical clothing store/Scientific Supply House/old clothes pile?
Eyeware	Protect your eyes/face from any materials that may splash	Hardware Store
Decontamination
Bleach	20% solution (1 part bleach to 4 parts water) kills most anything living in 30 minutes	Grocery store/Drug store
Rubbing Alcohol	Kills many but not all microbial species by disrupting their outer cells wall. Will not always kill bacteria or fungal spores (use bleach)	Drug store (rubbing alcohol = 70% isopropyl alcohol)
Spray bottle	Spray down your work surfaces to clean and decomtaminate them	Hardware store
Wipes/Paper towels	Wipe down work areas	Grocery store
Hand soap	Always wash your hands when you're done or if you get something on them!	Drug store/grocery store
Specimen collection
Sterile Swab	Swab an area for environmental collection of microbes (skin, floors or other surfaces)	Drug store/Scientific Supply House
Toothpicks	Can streak existing colonies to new agar plates	Grocery Store
Sterile Saline	Used to when a swab prior to wiping an area, or to place your material of interest until it is plated or further evaluated	Drug store
Sterile tube/container	Hold swabs or materials until they are plated or analyzed.	Drug store/Scientific Supply House
Nichrome inoculating loop	Reusable loop for inoculating agar plates or liquid media	Scientific Supply House
Disposable spreaders or loops	One-use only plastic spreaders or loops for manipulating microbial materials	Scientific Supply House
Sterilization
Oven	An oven is not the most ideal equipment, but "cooking" broth or agar-based media can generally sterilize the material	At home
Pressure Cooker	Can place items/media at defined pressure and temperature to provide better sterilization. Check with the owner of the cooker before using it to prepare media!	At home?/Appliance store
Autoclave	Machine designed specifically to sterilize things	Commonly found in hospitals, and universities
Bunsen Burner	Flame source to sterilize nichrome wires/inoculating loops while streaking plates or inoculating media	Scientific Supply House
Aluminum foil	Use to wrap items that will be sterilized	Grocery
Microbiological Media
Pre-poured plates	Agar plates to which you can directly streak or plate your materials	Scientific Supply House
Empty Petrie Plates	Plastic dish and lid for preparing your own agar media	Scientific Supply House
Distilled Water	For preparing liquid or agar media	Scientific Supply House or Drug store
Chicken Stock	Ready source of nutrients that can be diluted in media for general growth	Grocery
Agar base	Derived from algae - allows a liquid broth to solidify like jell-o	Scientific Supply House, possibly some healthfood stores or Asian markets
Nutritional Components	Can include sugars, sources of nitrogen, vitamins, amino acids	Scientific Supply House
Sugars: sucrose, glucose/dextrose, fructose	Common source of carbon for many microbial species	Grocery, Scientific Supply House
Nitrogen source	Ammonium chloride is commonly used, depends upon the media being made.	Scientific Supply House