I am growing bacteria from soil samples I obtained from mine tailings. I spread the samples on some nutrient, luria and tryptic soy agar plates. But, some of the colonies are growing just beneath the surface of the agar. Would it be ok if I just mash the agar to get to the colony and subculture that? I'm not sure how to do it otherwise.
Check https://milnepublishing.geneseo.edu/suny-microbiology-lab/chapter/bacteriological-culture-methods/
Also check https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4846335/
Hi Nicole,
Have you tried Cabin- Sequestering method? I've attached the link below for reference.
Maybe extract the agar part which contains the culture of interest and add them to a new plate for subculturing?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31693673/
The authors used this to remove contamination microbes but I can see it as an application to extract complicated agar microbial cultures.
this has worked for me in the past, please let me know if this was helpful.
Thank you Adharsh Rajasekar . That's a really interesting paper. Though I'm not sure how I will get multiple colonies if I used the cabin-sequestering method. If I understand correctly it will isolate the colony in that one spot on the plate. Would you mind explaining what you're thinking?
Nicole Botha Unfortunately, you can't extract multiple colonies.
You can extract single colonies and add them to their corresponding new plate for growing them. It's a long and exciting or tedious process but it will work.
Please let me know if this works! Good luck.