Hello,
I was wondering if there were any methods commonly used to reduce bacterial load in an algal culture. These aren't axenic cultures but the microbial load is a little high, since we'd like to start a microplate experiment soon.
I was thinking a gentle centrifugation to pellet the algae, then to remove the supernatant and resuspend in fresh media. Or to use a cell strainer that allows bacteria but not algae to pass (we have a variety of sizes of algae, though, from chlamy down to blue greens), then keep what is on the strainer.
Or is it better just to start with fresh cultures from our strain bank?
Thanks for any help you can give and take care!
I recommend you start from scratch.
If you have observed bacterial growth in your cultures repeatedly, may be try using antibiotics individually or in combinations. You could use Hygromycin B, Penicillin, Aureomycin, Chloramphenicol, Tetracycline in various combinations.
Neomycin, Ceporin etc could be used as well, but reports suggest they could be algicidal too. But I guess, that is something that you will have to figure out with each of these antibiotics - a concentration that eliminates only the contaminants.
Hi Joshua,
This method by Droop is fairly common:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00071616700650171?needAccess=true
Whatever method you choose to use I'd recommend having replicates of your culture material in case something goes wrong!
Good luck!
Hi Joshua,
If you're using culture media in plates, you can use one or combined antibiotics. The most recommended antibiotics are penicillin, streptomycin, and gentamycin or a mix of chloramphenicol, tetracycline, and bacitracin. If you're about to use them, it's recommended to make a solution in distilled water and filter-sterilize in 0.2 microm filter units, and final concentrations of 50 - 500 mg/L.
Check this
http://ina.tmsoc.org/CODENET/culturenotes.htm
What I did in past was, centrifuged my culture in BBM and resuspended the pellet. Then I streak plated the sample and performed selective isolation. I was able to drastically decrease the microbial load using this technique.
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