Temporary stocks of bacteria on plates in refrigerator, crawling maggots and few flies at times
Have you come across this situation?
In fact the maggots would streak for us even more across the plate.
The eggs of the flies could hatch and form maggots on stock. Are we not made to think how resistant these maggots are to survive among the pathogenic cells of bacteria?
U r right Ms. Ruchi. The concept shared is quite interesting. Its amusing, mainly because maggots are able to survive among the highly virulent/ pathogenic strains of bacteria.
It seems to be much more than mere lack of predilection sites on maggots!!
Most of these maggots appear if the plates have been shipped or there is already an infection doing rounds in the lab.
The maggots do have a preference for some strains and detailed work has been done in C.elegans systems.
But papers like these also throw some light on egg laying and larvae development as well.
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/27/9262.full
I agree with you Ms. Ruchi, as there are a lot of therapeutic perspectives in connection to this.
I'm made to wonder how your aseptic technique allows for maggots on your culture.
Or are you putting fly eggs intentionally on your plate. I am confused by the question.
Dear Dr. Jonathan it could happen only once in a while when the refrigerator houses different culture plates with growth and has other samples too.
You are right, like in my previous work place, if we have less crowded refrigerator which is not opened too often during the single day, we could avoid such contamination. This used to happen in a teaching hospital lab with too many students where maintaining clean refrigerator is quite difficult because of the work load. Its not happening now as the lab
The question is not about contamination here. The research question is about survival of such maggots and thriving in the presence of highly virulent bacterial cells.
Virulent to whom? Pathogens are often very specific about what organisms they will infect.
Yes, the microbes do exhibit host specificity.
But here the highlight is pointing at a concept-
Medical Maggots™ (maggot therapy, maggot debridement therapy, MDT, biotherapy, biosurgery, biodebridement, larval therapy). Maggot therapy is the controlled, therapeutic use of live blow fly larvae ("maggots") to treat skin and soft tissue wounds.
Observations have indicated that maggots have the ability to debride wound beds, provide anti-microbial activity and also stimulate wound healing.
You could refer:
Maggot Debridement Therapy in the Treatment of Complex Diabetic Wounds. Hawaii Med J. Jun 2011; 70(6): 121–124.
Regards,
Dr. Godfred
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