How do you preserve bacterial culture for a long time and frequent a culture is subculture when stored at refrigerated condition?
Dear Dr.
After inoculating the culture in the fresh medium, transfer it to a suitable container. You can use sterile tubes, vials, or other containers with airtight caps. Label the containers with essential information such as the bacterial strain, date of subculture. Generally, Glycerol 10% and rest of the 90% is ur culture is used to store culture at -80 degree.
To maintain the culture's health and genetic stability, subculture it periodically. The frequency of subculturing can vary depending on the bacterial strain and medium but is often done every few weeks to months. Subculturing prevents the culture from entering the stationary phase and helps remove any genetic mutations.
Generally, the best way to carry out bacteria preservation for long term storage is to freeze the samples and store them in ultra-low temperature freezers, to freeze dry them or use cryogenic storage systems.For long-term storage, microorganisms are cryopreserved at temperatures below freezing at -20°C or -80°C. You can either put your cells straight in the freezer or snap-freeze them using liquid nitrogen. Cryopreservation is suitable for many bacteria, algae, fungi, viruses, and protozoa. Cryopreservation and lyophilisation both are well-known methods for long-term preservation of microbial cultures. Use of ultra-low temperature with different cryoprotectants for preservation of microorganism is a traditional practice in every microbiological laboratory. Unused culture media for anaerobes should be anaerobically stored at cool temperature. Under aerobic atmosphere, oxygen will be dissolved in media which may lead worse grow of anaerobes. By refrigerating culture medium using AnaeroKeep helps the growth of anaerobes when the medium is used. Sealed, unopened containers should be stored at room temperature 15-20°C. Opened containers should have the cap or lid carefully and securely replaced. It is important that opened containers are stored in a dry atmosphere at room temperature. Stock cultures can be subcultured for working cultures weekly, typically kept as slants. A seed lot system is recommended. A passage is defined as a subculture involving growth of the viable microorganism with fresh medium. Subculturing is a known method used to preserve the viability of the sample, but this practice is laborious and exposes the culture to contaminants. In modern times, refrigeration offers a great solution.Pure cultures can be successfully stored at 0-4°C either in refrigerators or in cold-rooms. This method is applied for short duration (2-3 weeks for bacteria and 3-4 months for fungi) because the metabolic activities of the microorganisms are greatly slowed down but not stopped. Subculturing is a known method used to preserve the viability of the sample, but this practice is laborious and exposes the culture to contaminants. In modern times, refrigeration offers a great solution.
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