A) In this hypothetical scenario, your instructor asks you to determine the number of organisms in a water sample. Observation of your dilution plates reveals the presence of spreading colonial forms on some of the culture plates. What is the rationale for the elimination of these plate counts from your experimental data.

B) A patient exhibits a boil on his neck. You, as a microbiology technician, are asked to identify the causative organism and determine whether it is pathogenic. Describe the procedure that you would follow to make this determination.