I'm doing a Staphylococcus and biome project on companion animals and their owners. I'll be swabbing the animals' nares, mouth and underside and the owners nares, mouth and hands.
How can I store these swabs for a few months or less while preserving the bacterial biome for RNA extraction and full/whole genome sequencing. It's not only for the Staph but for intended sequencing of the bacterial biome of the swab location.
Can I freeze the swabs at -80 just like that? Or can they be put into buffered peptone water and frozen perhaps?
To preserve bacterial cultures for long time you have to add 15-20% glycerol as a cryo-protectant to the culture media used for cultivation of bacteria and stored at - 20 C.
Hi jamie
As bacteria require medium to grow, so you can have colonies on basic media and then storing the bacteria either in water or PBS for several months as said in results of this article attached
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12803555
To preserve bacterial cultures for long time you have to add 15-20% glycerol as a cryo-protectant to the culture media used for cultivation of bacteria and stored at - 20 C.
Hello Jamie,
Working bacterial stocks can be streaked onto agar plates and stored at 4°C for daily or weekly use. Culture dishes should be wrapped with laboratory sealing film (plastic or paraffin) and stored upside down (agar side up) to minimize contamination and to keep both the culture and agar properly hydrated. Some bacterial strains can be stored for up to 1 year at 4°C in agar stab cultures, which are especially useful for transporting samples to other research facilities. Stab cultures are prepared by first sterilizing strain-compatible agar (e.g., lysogeny broth [LB] agar for E. coli) and then transferring the warm liquid agar to screw-cap vials using the appropriate aseptic technique. After the agar has solidified, a single colony is picked from an actively growing culture using a sterile, straight wire. The wire with the bacteria is then plunged deep into the soft agar several times, and the vial is incubated at 37°C for 8–12 hours with the cap slightly loose. The vial is then sealed tightly and stored in the dark at 4°C.
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