Bacillus Species

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I am wondering how to distinguish between bacillus subtilis, bacillus licheniformis, bacillus megaterium and bacillus thurigiensis. I'm working on my unknown for microbiology

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You should have learned about some differential tests to distinguish each species.

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Look up pictures and find defining characteristics of each. But as Future said, you should have learned about some differential tests by now if you're working on your unknowns.

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Specializes in Emergency / Disaster.

I'm doing this right now too... There are a series of unknown tests you can do in order to determine the differences... today we put our unknown into 5 different broths - citrate, a green one I don't remember at the moment (but it turns blue if it reacts) and then 3 broths with different sugars and tubes at the bottom to catch gas if the unknown produces a gas. Did you already quadrant streak and gram stain your unknown? Are you sure its Bacillus? We have a bunch of unknowns in our class - mine is a gram positive coccus - most likely Staphylococcus.

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