Coming from an engineering background and having no prior activities which connect me to working with living organisms, through this question i want to ask what are the safety measures and precautions one can take while culturing algae?
Hi Nishit
The following aspects should be taken into account when planning to carry out any investigations involving microalgae: type of the organism used, source of the organism, temperature of incubation, culture medium used, type of investigation and the facilities available including illumination, chances of contamination, skill of people involved etc. Extensive measures must be taken to keep the cultures clean (chemically and biologically). Chemical contaminations often have deleterious effects on algal growth. Similarly, biological contamination of pure algal cultures by other eukaryotes and prokaryotic organisms in most cases invalidates experimental work. In practice, it is very difficult to obtain bacteria-free (axenic) cultures, and although measures should be taken to minimize bacterial numbers, a degree of bacterial contamination is often acceptable. It is advisable to keep a backup culture in the freezer (as seed).
Best
Dola
After seeing the results of a number of engineers with limited biology background try and grow algae, I would suggest starting small, on the order of .25-1 L for a couple of generations. Once you can grow this amount, move up by a factor of 10 (2.5-10 L) and repeat this process until you are at your desired culture size. The comment by Dola Bhattacharjee's comment above covers most of the basic factors in algae cultivation, it takes time to get to know each organism.
Dear Nishit, something very simple: always start your cultures using water from the locality (filtered to remove most bacteria). It really works.
Greetings, Rosaluz
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