What is the best method to measure filamentous cyanobacteria (i.e Oscillatoria sp.) growth other than using dry weight?
Since Oscillatoria is a filamentous, non-heterocystous, photosynthetic cyanobacterium (blue-green alga), its growth is directly proportional to the photosynthetic pigment chlorophyll a. You cam measure the growth of this alga by measuring the amount of chlorophyll a which can be easily extracted in methanol and quantified (in terms of ug /ml) by multiplying the optical density of the chlorophyll a at 663nm by a factor of 12.63.
Thank you for the suggestions. Yes the problem in measuring Oscillatoria sp. is they're filamentous and they formed mats which is hard to measure using Spect. Has anyone tried homogenizer method for quantification?
You can homogenize or sonicate the Oscillatoria biomass with methanol for the complete extraction of chlorophyll for better quantification of chlorophyll a.
you can measure the absorbance of the homogenized algal culture at 760nm using spectrophotometer. (light scattering technique)
The filaments of Oscillatoria may be damaged during homogenization and the photosynthetic pigments may come out which will affect the accurate measurement of cell density.
@surendra singh sir , can you please given the reference paper for above mentioned method?
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