Are there anti-yeast agents for cell culture?

Are there any anti-yeast agents for cell culture? I repeatedly had
problems with yeast contaminations but not with bacterial
contaminations.

Peter

On 22 Sep 2003, Peter Frank wrote:


Amphotericin B ("Fungizone") and mycostatin ("Nystatin") are commonly used
antifungals in cell culture, and are available from all the usual
suspects. My last lab happily used nystatin from Invitrogen Gibco. There's
also pimaricin ("Fungin", from Invivogen), and perhaps some others, but
you'd probably want to use those only in special circumstances.

tom

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Peter Frank <[Only registered users see links. ]> wrote:

Tom has already pointed out some candidates. I only would like to add
that I was always reluctant to use antibiotics for cell lines (primary
cultures are a different story): If there is a problem with my sterile
technique the incubator the hood or whatever I want to know it and fix
the actual problem rather than rely on Pen/Strept and antimycotica to
keep the contaminants at bay.

cu
Philipp

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>Peter Frank <[Only registered users see links. ]> wrote:

I completely agree with Philipp. The common antibiotics like
Pen/Strep will take out your bacteria or fungi, but will leave any
mycoplasma that piggybacked into your cultures with the original
infection. I say, if it gets infected - throw it out! Additionally,
the antibiotic puts selective pressure on cell lines, adding to the
problem of phenotypic drift.

Sean
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On 23 Sep 2003, Sean Patterson wrote:


Absolutely. Working equipment, good technique and rigorous weeding-out are
all you really need to keep cultures sterile. However, if you have a
precious cell line and it gets infected, it's useful to have a way out.
This was our situation - we were doing stable transfections, and routinely
got contamination after the transfection step. We did our best to work out
why, and in the meantime, used drugs to keep the cultures going. For our
purposes, it was mostly enough to keep them alive long enough to do
mitotic harvests for FISH, so this approach was just about workable.

I have to say, we did okay with yeast, but we never actually managed to
totally eliminate the bacterial contamination from a culture: the
antibiotics would reduce the growth, but as soon as we took them away, the
bugs came back. Has anyone absolutely ever managed to eradicate a
bacterial contamination? I know the drill - use antibiotics, wash
thoroughly, use fresh media, be squeaky-clean in the hood, etc; we did all
that, but there were always a few bugs left, which were enough to
reestablish the contamination.

tom

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