To avoid any chance of contamination and if there is availability in presence of other incubators,I said no.At least fungi, bacteria in two separate incubators.Within bacteria,you may incubate sporulating bacteria alone in small incubator.
Can there be a cross contamination if culture plates with closed lids containing Escherichia coli, Salmonella, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Bacillus subtilis, Streptococcus pyogenes, Staphylococcus aureus were kept apart in the same incubator?
Usually it is safe to incubate different bacterial culture plates in one incubator at the same time. But mishandling may cause cross-contamination. To reduce cross-contamination, I agree with Varsha. In our lab, we usually use parafilm to seal the bacterial culture plates or use a petri dish bag to store the bacterial culture plates in the incubator.
3. If plates containing motile organisms are not made to have too close contact and the media not beyond normal level. Care is needed to ensure that any media that poured on the edge of the plate is aseptically removed before motile organisms would use it as channel to contaminate the next plate
4. if there is general cleanliness of the incubator
However, if you have enough space, you can incubate an organism per time
If proper precautions are taken, there should be no problems of cross contaminations between cultures. But it would be better to grow fungi and bacteria separately and also take into account spore dispersion.
Yes, since your bacterial cultures will be in the petri dishes with covers.
No, if two different bacterial culture requires different incubating temperature. You can't grow a bacterium requiring 45oC to grow e.g. Salmonella on MSRV and another bacterium requiring 35oC e.g. E. coli on TSA in the same incubation.
Yes, it is possible to use an incubator for several bacterial samples if no special incubator is available and to maintain more pollution, the parafilm bar can be used to close dishes
If properly handled, you definitely can incubate different bacterial plates (with different organisms) in the same incubator. The incubator has to be cleaned well, the plates must have their proper lid on and must be placed carefully (to avoid spilling of specimen or moisture). Also make sure not to completely fill the incubator with plates, tubes, etc...
Precautions should be taken in cases of fast spore germinating microbes! A parafilm wrap is a best option avoid that! Also avoid coincubation of BSL-1 organism with BSL-2 & BSL-3 for safety! A proper handling and time to time fumigation may work too