Nicholas Landau wrote in message <7drbbf$eka at er7.rutgers.edu>...
>ashwin_k18 at my-dejanews.com writes:
>>> is it possible to prepare Nutrient media with inorganic gelling agents
and if
>>so please give me some examples. Agar is very expensive and not all labs
>>can afford large quantities of it. Also agar is likely to influence growth
of
>>some microorganisms.
>>The good news is that other gelling agents are available. The bad news
>is that agar is about the cheapest one. In addition, organisms exist
>which can degrade all gelling buffers (although no one organisms of
>which I am aware can degrade them all). Starch, gellatin and "gel-rite"
>can be used to make media. If you can't afford agar, then it is time
>to start filling out those grant applications!
Of course, you don't have to buy the ultra-pure grades. For some things, we
buy agar in strips and boil it up ourselves (we get much better Bacillus
sporulation on this, for example).
Lesley Robertson
Delft
