Yeast contamination

[S L Forsburg]

Doris Germain wrote:
> 
>         A colleague of mine has  yeast contamination in her mammalian cells
> cultures (kept in G418). Does anybody knows of a drug that would kill yeast
> and not mammanian cells?

Well, we're usually more interested in keeping them alive, but
there are various fungicidal formulations on the market that are used. 
 Fungizone is one.  (Despite my offers to demonstrate that lab yeasts 
arent the culprits my tissue culture colleagues don't seem willing to
 let me seed their plates to show them).

We finally figured out that the reason we were having such trouble with
liquid culture is that the plugs the kitchen uses in flasks are 
impregnated  with a fungicide.  Hello, aluminum caps....

And in the my-organism-eats-your-organism stakes, the Drosophila 
floating around our lab are a real problem.  Them LOVE pombe.  WE did
an experiement in the fly lab next door:  two vials of liquid culture
media, one with cerevisiae, one with pombe.  The assay:  count the 
number of drowned Drosophila in each vial to determine their 
preference.  The results?  6 out of 7 Drosophila prefer pombe!

:-)

--susan



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>->->->->->->-><-<-<-<-<-<-<-<-
Susan L Forsburg PhD
MBVL, The Salk Institute
forsburg at salk.edu
http://flosun.salk.edu/~forsburg