I need to do one experiment to grow bacteriophage in the lab, I wonder how I can get rid of it afterwards? And can people in the lab doing bacteria experiment right after I clean everything, or it's better to wait until one to two weeks?
I would appreciate anyone to provide a detailed protocol regarding how to clean the incubator, flasks, centrifuge bottles, the bench and working area. Thank you!
Hello, I have been working with several E. coli bacteriophages for years (1990-1999), including the famous T1 phage which is sometimes referred to as being problematic for lab contamination. And I had never ever any problem, even just using normal pipette tips (without filter - they were not that popular yet at that time). Just good microbiological practice and using autoclaves for disinfection worked well.
All the best! Ralf
Hi Ali and Yanmei,
after my own projects with bacteriophages I used them in a practical course in Genetics with students in Biology and Biochemistry who were in their second or third university year. We followed the activation of a lysogenic phage who over time killed the culture (except for some spontaneous mutants, which later overgrew the culture). And we used a set of bacteriophages recognising different outer membrane proteins (OMPs) as receptors to identify strains with different combinations of OMP mutations (Prilipov et al. 1998. Coupling site-directed mutagenesis with high-level expression: large scale production of mutant porins from E. coli. FEMS Microbial. Lett. 163: 65-72). We had this course over several years without any problems of contamination. I mean, at least when working with the phages that we had used, there was no exceptional danger of getting contaminated, even without superior skills.
Best wishes, Ralf
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Biological Science
- Microbiology
- Microorganisms
- Bacteria