You are culturing a new bacterium in the laboratory. You cannot find any glucose it the lab when you are making growth medium, so you decide to use honey instead. You add twice as much honey than is called for in the medium recipe, because you want to give the organism the best opportunity or growth. To your surprise, the organism does not grow on your modified medium. Select the most likely explanation.
A) The growth medium became hypotonic with the addition of so much honey; the bacteria underwent plasmolysis and died.
B) The growth medium became hypertonic with the addition of so much honey; the bacteria underwent plasmolysis and died.
C) The growth medium became halophilic with the addition of so much honey; the bacteria underwent plasmolysis and died.
D) The growth medium became hypertonic with the addition of so much honey; the bacteria underwent osmotic lysis and died.
E) The growth medium became hypotonic with the addition of so much honey; the bacteria underwent simple diffusion and burst.

Question

You are culturing a new bacterium in the laboratory. You cannot find any glucose it the lab when you are making growth medium, so you decide to use honey instead. You add twice as much honey than is called for in the medium recipe, because you want to give the organism the best opportunity or growth. To your surprise, the organism does not grow on your modified medium. Select the most likely explanation.
A) The growth medium became hypotonic with the addition of so much honey; the bacteria underwent plasmolysis and died.
B) The growth medium became hypertonic with the addition of so much honey; the bacteria underwent plasmolysis and died.
C) The growth medium became halophilic with the addition of so much honey; the bacteria underwent plasmolysis and died.
D) The growth medium became hypertonic with the addition of so much honey; the bacteria underwent osmotic lysis and died.
E) The growth medium became hypotonic with the addition of so much honey; the bacteria underwent simple diffusion and burst.

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Honey is a concentrated solution, so adding twice as much as called for in the recipe would make the growth medium hypertonic. Hypertonic solutions have a higher solute concentration than the bacterial cytoplasm, so water will leave the bacterial cell by osmosis, causing the cell to undergo plasmolysis and die.

You Are Culturing a New Bacterium in the Laboratory