BIOLOG plates have 95 different carbon sources and the dye used was a redox dye. Are the microbes growing in different wells utilizing the substrates or are they just there and the colour appears due to oxidation. It's really confusing for me.
The carbon source is used and microbially degraded. During degradation (which is an oxidative process) electrons are transferred to an acceptor (which is in the case of BiOLOG) the redox dye. Consequently, the dye turns violet/blue. If a carbon source is not used, the dye stays colorless. As result you get a "fingerprint" of carbon sources used by the strain under investigation. This works also for mixed cultures or e.g. soil samples [see e.g., Dobler et al (2001) Journal of Soils and Sediments 1(3):151-158]. A drawback when using environmental samples is the fact that you get a signal of only the culturable microbes.
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