Wednesday, July 21, 2010

How do you tell good bacteria from bad bacteria on an agar plate?

Is there any shape or colour difference?

How do you tell good bacteria from bad bacteria on an agar plate?
If you are culturing someone who is sick - say someone who has pneumonia - then chances are the colonies that are all alike and have the greatest number on the plate are the ones causing the problem. You run biochemical tests on them and determine if they are known pathogens. Stuff gets complicated when you have someone with a bad immune system and the bacteria that are normally good are actually the bad ones.
Reply:The bad bacteria are smoking and playing cards.
Reply:give each colony a little lick....the one that causes you to black out, give you an upset stomach and cause you to experience sudden neurological seizures for the rest of your life are the bad bacteria.
Reply:color ,shape, size, indentation of colonies, irregular margins. Are you using a selective agar or just blood agar. The possibility of isolating some pretty nasty stuff is great. If you don't know what your doing, enlist the help of someone who does.A community college with a microbiology lab would be a good start. There are strains of staph aureus that are resistant to most antibiotics. An accidental infection could prove fatal.


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