A simple method that is often used to follow growth of bacteria in broth is to measure the optical density at 600 nm using a spectrophotometer. This OD600 is due to light scattering (i.e. turbidity) by the bacteria.
Thanks Adam. But I need to difference beetwen live bacteria and death bacteria, by optical density is impossible.
Dear Dayan,
I have never tried this with bacteria, but for plant protoplasts, a useful test for membrane integrity is to incubate with fluorescein di-acetate (membrane permeant, low fluorescence). The enzymes inside cells split the acetates, the fluorescent dye accumulates within the cells (membrane impermeant, highly fluorescent). I can imagine that this scheme also works with bacteria, provided your system has suffient sensitivity in all the parameters that are needed/wanted for such an experiment (FSC,SSC, time of flight, fluorescence). Better dyes are available now, the Live/Dead kit for example uses a combination of Propidium Iodine, but this set is more suitable for eukaryotes, never seen an application for prokaryotes, bacteria. Hope this is useful. Kind regards, Harrie Verhoeven.
This may be just what you are looking for:
https://tools.thermofisher.com/content/sfs/manuals/mp07007.pdf
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