I am currently culturing an Erdman strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. After culturing we need a way to disrupt the bacterial clumps at a microscopic level. We have tried homogenization with a pestel and a homoge tube and sonicatoin up to 8min in a water bath but have had little success. What a is a good method that people have found that has worked for their lab? Thanks in advance!
Dear, both syringing and gentle sonication efficiently break up clumps of M. tuberculosis and also result in an apparent increase in viability because clumping results in an underestimation of the true viable count.
I think sonication could do the job, and you may add little drops of Tween 80 to help in distribution
Hi Everyone,
Thank you so much for your responses! I have found that sonication even in the presence of tween has little effect on the disruption of Mycobacterium tuberculosis clumps. I did find a paper in nature ( https://www.nature.com/articles/srep27232 ) that I will be experimenting with to determine if it is applicable to Mycobacterium tuberculosis. If people are interested I can update everyone on the status of experiment when it is completed. Thanks again!
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