Week 5

 This week I looked at Erin https://yeastperfection.blogspot.com/ and Gioia’s https://yeasterday-gn312.blogspot.com/ blog to find out what research questions they were asking. Both had questions regarding the types of microbes in the samples. Erin specifically wanted to know what species were correlated to which controls and what types of fruits. Gioia wanted to know what species are the most universal in the starters. Both of these questions could be feasibly answered by gathering data from all the starters and putting them in graphs like the QIIME we looked at a couple weeks ago. Some different questions they had that I liked were “Does aroma correlate more strongly with fungal or bacterial types present?” (Erin) and “Are there certain types of fruit/treatment groups that tend to have the same microbial makeup?” (Gioia). Gioia’s question was similar to one I asked previously. Erin’s question may be a little harder to answer just because we submitted aromas based on what we thought the starters smells like, so the range could be quite large and consistency may not be there. 

My previous question were as follows:

Were there any microbes that were only present in the starters with a certain type of fruit?

What types of fruits make more of a variety of microbes grow?

When comparing all the control starters to one another, why do they not all have the same amount and type of microbes present? What other factors can contribute to these differences?

I like my first two questions and think they could be feasibly answered, but I’m going to throw my third question away. There isn’t really a way we could find the answer to it scientifically there are so many different factors that could have accounted for these differences and we just don’t have the time to compare them all. Instead I’d like to ask more about where the fruits came from and what form they came in and how that is linked to microbial populations. For example does having frozen or fresh pineapple make a difference in the type of microbes present?