IUBio

bacteria staining

Jesús Garcia-Gil garciagil at morgat.udg.es
Wed Oct 14 10:02:34 EST 1998


What do you REALLY need?

Viable and culturable?
Viable but non-culturable? They exist!!!
Viable and active
Viable but inactive? They exist too!!
Viable....in what culture medium and what conditions (aerobic,
microaerophilic, anaerobic? temperature?)

If you just want to know how many viables are there in a sample just
count all bacteria by generic fluorescent staining (DAPI is OK) or flow
cytometric techniques. Then try to make a generic culturing of
mesophiles aerobic-microaerophiles (pour-plating in nutrient agar at 30
ºC) and compare. You'll have nothing but an slight idea. Better than
nothing.

Of course there must be other ways.

Good luck

"Debra L. Swanson" wrote:
> 
> Thanks to all who replied to my inquiry about cell staining, but, oops...what I
> REALLY need to know is a staining protocol that will differentiate viable bugs
> from nonviable bugs (evidently a difficult thing to do?).
> Thanks again!
> 
> Debra Swanson, Assistant Scientist
> Comparative Medicine
> University of Minnesota
> Minneapolis, MN  55455
> swans061 at maroon.tc.umn.edu

-- 

*********************************************************************
Jesús Garcia-Gil
Secció de Microbiologia        Tel: +34 72 418175
Institut d'Ecologia Aquàtica   Fax: +34 72 418150
Universitat de Girona
Campus de Montilivi
E-17071 Girona (Spain)         http://morgat.udg.es/personal/jgg.html
*********************************************************************



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