Home bacteria cultivation, what steps to take?

[cosmicnet]

Hi,

I've got a compound microscope and plan to investigate the bacteria and fungi of skin flora. Although uni thus far have been very helpful, I want to do as much as this as possible from home and am considering converting the spare room to a lab. I understand that there are safety precautions that I need to take when cultivating bacteria for identification.

 

My ultimate aim is to cultivate bacteria from skin samples for the purposes of identification; so that I may conduction experiments to test several theories that I have with regards to skin conditions.

 

At this time I'm really not sure where to start. I can't seem to find an appropriate book for advice on what I want to do, setting up a home lab, etc. I certainly don't want to culture up anything harmful, and if I do I want to be able to identify and dispose of it properly. I understand there will be specific equipment I'll need, the plan is to build this up a piece at a time and I progress.

 

Any advice and pointers would be very much appreciated.

[Greippi]

Safety issues aside, here are some basic things you'll need off the top of my head:

 

- lots of agar of various types.

- lots of growth medium of various types (e.g. LB)

- aseptic conditions (to prevent contamination of your samples), I'm sure you know how to do aseptic cultures.

- incubators (37 degrees C I expect you'll need most often) with shakers.

- bleach or something to kill the bugs (just bung in the conical or whatever you're using to grow the cultures up). My lab uses something awesome called Virkon. It's pink.

 

To be honest, you don't need much to be able to culture microorganisms. I'd say the incubator/shaker s will be the most annoying thing to get hold of.

 

How do you propose to get around the problem of getting a "pure" culture? Obviously from a skin swab there will be loads of different types of beasties on there, and you don't want your cultures taken over by the strongest of the bugs if you're looking for something else.

[CharonY]

Human flora is a bit tricky as we carry a lot of opportunistic pathogens around. At low titers they are harmless, but cultivating them into high amounts may pose a problem. Using rich media as LB you are more likely to grow fungi rather than bacteria, most of the time. Getting pure cultures of anything is a completely different beast.

If one wants to do an identification, it is probably far easier to amplify 16s and sequence it (which does not require much of an enrichment).