Any good source to get unique bacteria by pure culturing for doing all experiments?

[niharika]

I need some pure culture of bacteria to perform all experiments like staining, growth rate measurement, biochemical tests for activities etc.... throughout the year.So I want to isolate some unique type of bacteria.It is better if they have more features like endospore production etc..so that I can get results for all the experiments.They should be growing fast.I should be able to maintain them easily without the help of fridge or incubator.It is better if I know what result I have to get after doing test before doing it.So anyone please suggest me any good source, some characters of the colonies of bacteria.(and also name of that bacteria if possible).

[CharonY]

There are certain things on your wish list that are mutually exclusive. Obviously if cure cultures of something exists, they are not unique anymore. Or do you want to isolate a pure culture of something? Well, that requires a huge lot of trial and error. Depending on the bacteria you may well be trying out media and culture conditions for a year or more before you really get something.

[niharika]

I really dont have that much time.I just want to isolate some pure culture quickly so that I can proceed with experiments.I am just asking about source sample.If anyone could give me suggestion about what sample is to be taken for inoculation and characters of some colonies I will isolate that colony.

[CharonY]

I think you are underestimating the time and effort you need to do create and characterize pure culture. As a rule of thumb, characterizing one novel species is basically one paper. I know of some PhD students that manger to create roughly 3-4 pure cultures from soil samples, for instance. And they considered themselves lucky (there are attempts from water samples that have been going on for roughly 20 years). It is much more difficult than just a simple dilution plating and picking colonies.

 

Creating pure novel pure cultures is definitely not something that you can do quickly. But if you want just to create a pure colony based on known species, just mix some well-known ones with distinct attributes and try to recreate a pure culture out of it.

 

[LawfulBlade]

This is confusing. If the bacteria needs to be novel, you're going to need years to get it to grow in culture, and you'll be lucky to accomplish it, even then. Are you just doing this to learn staining/basic techniques? What kind of media are you using? Where are you planning on keeping your culture? It sounds like you're looking for really basic advice, so I'll gear this towards that.

 

If you can't keep it in an incubator, I'll assume it needs to be room temp. Swab the bottom of your shoe with a sterile q-tip, and rub it all over a petri dish of TSA. If you want to take an airborne bacteria sample, you can just open the dish with TSA (or similar) and wave it around in the air for a few minutes. After a few days, check to see if there's growth (there should be something). You can do a sterile streak plate from your initial plate, and do what you want from there.

 

Does this sound like what you're going for? CharonY is advising you well, if you're looking for something more advanced than what I just described.

[niharika]

Exactly.I just want some culture to learn basic techniques.I am not going to characterize any new culture.I need existing culture.I will try your shoe idea.I wanted such ideas.reason is, when I tried spreading soil sample, I got clumsy plate.I dint know what colony to take.Moreover if I choose any colony which donot produce spores or if it is yeast colony, I will fail in techniques.So I am just asking you people to give me some key points to select inoculum and to select colonies from it so that I can select organisms which are known to you already and about which you are sure that they will give good results.

 

I just mentioned word unique because I need to have some culture which is different from what my friends are having.They all will try to isolate from air or water.So I want to try something different.

[LawfulBlade]

You'll likely end up with a "clumsy plate" (you meant mixed colonies, right?) regardless of sampling technique, because bacteria are ubiquitous. But, to some extent, they should be resolving into individual colonies, which, with good technique, can be sampled to see which one you want to streak into a pure colony. Additionally, using your shoe isn't going to guarantee an endospore-forming colony, or is it going to rule out yeast. You'll have to conduct a number of tests to determine the characteristics each colony does or doesn't have. Rapid staining and microscopy with a light scope ought to be fine for this. If you have questions beyond this, google will pull up simple protocols for endospore stains that you can use. It's just bizarre to me that your class gave you no guidance on this. Good luck.

[CharonY]

If you just want to separate out existing strains, I would go for a mix of well-culturable strains (think E. coli, Bacillus subtilis, etc.) and read up on selective plating. Then choose strains according to the chemicals/plate types you have access to, and select the strains accordingly. Starting from a mixed culture this will give you defined strains in the end.

 

A more inelegant way is dilution plating, but even with established cultures it is often tricky to have a really pure one in the end.

[niharika]

My class gave no guidance because they did not ask me to collect any spore producing species.They asked to pick some colony randomly.I am asking anybody to give me some hint to select sample to be used and colony because I personally want to get positive results for all the tests.I heard that coloured, smooth colonies are pathogenic,microbes isolated from soil are mostly of bacillus type, from dung are mostly of escherichia type, etc..so I am searching for some more key points like that.I am not sure whether there are any such shortcut key points or hints to know about microbes by seeing colonies.They need not to be accurate.So I am asking you people.