I've ditched these cells now anyway because of this perceived contamination and incubators have been sterilised, but wanted to see if anyone had an opinion on what this contaminant is.
I think it is fungal, but can't be sure - It was floating in the media and not visible without a microscope. It could be seen floating in a different plane to other dead cells at 4x (possibly on the surface of the liquid), and would tend to reappear after washing/media changes.
I had penicillin/streptomycin and fungizone in the media, so surprised that whatever it was seemed to persist.
This was in a culture of iPSCs and otherwise looked pretty healthy.
Does anyone know what it is?
Thanks!
I know this sounds weird but these are most probably fibres either from your lab coat, tissue or something that has a lot of fibres.
They are usually harmless and go away with a media change but sometimes sticks to the plate and need slight nudge to get rid of them.
You can test it by leaving them in incubator for 2 more days and if you see way too many fibres, it is fungal contamination. The best way to find the difference is the fibres are very long compared to hypae and has a halo around the length of the fibre just like in the picture.
Hope this helps!
Hence you had penicillin/streptomycin and ampotericin B, there were less chance to grow the fungi contamination. Sometimes it was from the environmental contmination of some kind of dust particles. If it was a fungal growth you can have a multiple growth with fillaments or conidia.
To confirm this, you can re incubate them and see if there will be huge growth with conidia, conidia pore, hyphae, or etc. becouse some fungal strains shows resistant against ampotericin B also.
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