Hi I’m culturing diatoms in conical flasks and they tend to stick at the bottom and the wall of the flasks. What is the possible method to get rid of the sticking cells from the flasks wall besides sonication and manual scraping? Any suggestion? Many thanks!
Try Tween 80 (Polysorbate 80) or any good surfactant or use chaotropic agents like sodium nitrate...
If you mean about culturing then you can use a shaker for keeping the diatoms in suspension in order to avoid adhesion.
If you mean by cleaning of flask use a combination of Sulphuric acid and Nitric acid to clean you flask. That will help you eliminate the adhered cells.
If you want to culture a higher water volumen worth to some air stones and bubbling that will replace stirrer or shakers, if is for static high volumes as mesocosm experiments you need a some paddle or agitation by immersion of plates to the bottom of it to generate circulation. Good Luck!!
Not sure quite what you are asking.I have harvested attached diatoms diatoms with a sterile rubber policeman. If you are careful you can do this without damaging the cells. Stopping adhesion in the first place can be achieved by reducing the Ca++ content in the medium to about 10% of the initial recipe. This works well with marine species and we have used it for cyanos too.
In addition to the suggestions already given, if you want to clean the flask, try adding some crushed ice, then shake/rotate the flask. The ice crystals will scrape off the cells. Eventually the ice will melt, so it will leave no further trace other than the added water.
Add a good pinch of clean sea-sand to the flask; swirl the contents, allowing the "slug" of sand to dislodge the cells.
Thank you all for the answers! I have tried to culture them on the shaker, it seems that they still adhered to the bottom (I believe this is because they're benthic diatom!) Im doing a small volume of culture, with many replicates for my experiments..will try if I can put magnetic stirrer into all of them. By the way, they're freshwater diatom.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Vectorization