Identifying Bacteria in Project

[kat_r17]

Hello! I was hoping someone on here could help me out with a project I'm currently working on. I work at a brewery and I'm working on creating a method and way to identify different species, potential pathogenicity and the best methods to keep the levels of unwanted bacteria low. What I'm looking for is what kind of supplies I need and any links/methods to perform liquid media culturing. I'm also interested in any tips on how to identify what methods of sanitation work best in an industrial environment.

I have a few items already; agar, petri dishes, inoculation loops, slides, gram staining and sterile swabs.

I need to create a shopping list of any items that I may need to do this experiment but I'm not 100% sure on everything I need. Any input would be very appreciated!

Also any links/labs pertaining to this would also be appreciated.

 

Thank You!

[DrHouse]

You would need to gather your cultures, grow them, and test for specific characteristics of each potential microbe. For example, the Mannitol Salt Agar test can be used to differentiate between Staphyloccocus species and streptococcus species; staph lives in high salt while strept cannot. There are a various plethora of tests and to list them here would be very time consuming. I highly suggest consulting any university level microbiology textbook; there are also multiple websites out there that can be found by googling keywords (i.e google: tests that detect different bacterias in a culture). There are also various analytical techniques you can find that will help you determine the concentration of the bacteria; serial dilutions is a good method.

 

Good luck.