We have located Hydrodictyon in a freshwater pool. How can we purify it and which medium should we use? Will bold basal, BG 11 medium, or Chu 10 media be suitable? Also, I need a general method to purify unicellular algae from a field sample.
If this is a strain of H. reticulatum, mediums usually developed for green algae (Chlorella, Monoraphidium, Chlamydomonas, etc.) will work. Even sterile natural water from an eutrophized water body or stream is enough to sustain growth. Other species like H. africanum are much more dificult to culture because they easily fail into gamete formation.
You can add soil extract if you want to avoid to prepare micronutrients stock solution.
To purify monoalgal culture from a field example is not easy, but you can combine three strategies (repeat as many times as necessary):
- Soak vigorously an adult, healthy resistant net in clean water
- Filter a coenocyte (large multinucleate stright cell) from that net through sterile agar several times.
- Incubate it for several days -test incubation periods- in a growth medium containing an antibiotics coctail.
It should generally work, unless oscillatoria (filamentous blue green) are attached. Try to find coenocytes that are not attached to filamentous blue greens.
Good luck!
As a starting point, you may use soil-water medium (for Hydrodictyon as well as for unicellular green algae). Please see for details: R.C. Strarr (1964). The culture collection of algae at Indiana University. Amer. J. Bot. 51: 1013-1044.
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