Cell Contamination

[joey20]

My cells just got contaminated and they are quite important

What should i do now?
thanks in advance

[aftabac]

well
which type of contemination you get in your culture?
is it bacterial, fungal, or mycoplasma based or its viral contemination?? becasue each contemination has to be treated in specific way.
for bacterial and fungal contemination you can procced by two ways.
increase the amount of antibiotic or antimycotic compound that you use in media to a level that it stop growth of contemination and repeat this 2-3 times while changing media. hope you will able to remove that.
secondly if you are using Pencillin and streptomycin for bacterial growth, you can use some other antibiotic or antimycotic so that they kill the bacterial or funal contemination respectivly and use it 2-3 times and hopefully you will recover your cells.
i got bacterial contemination and i removed that by increasing the amount of same antibiotics that i used in preparing media.
best of luck for your work

regards
aftab

[Alyaa Mahmoud]

How do u possible know the type of contamination in your cell cultures ? we have been suffering contamination of HEPG2 cells for over two months now, the plates always show up some sort of slime with extremely offensive odour and the medium (RPMI) gets turbid ofcourse after 3-4 days, maximum 9 days, of reviving the cells ? We gave a sample of the contaminated medium to the microbiology lab, they grew it on Macconkey and agar but nothing grew up !!!!

Does anyone know what this could be and if there is a way to handle it ?
Thankss a lot

[aftabac]

well, there is first need to identification of contemination. bacterial and fungal or yeast contemination can be visually observed under the microscope. Bacterial contemination appear as small spots and yeast as oval like structures, but very small then the cell size. if it is not growing on Maconkey agar, then you first try to grow it in broth i.e. Nutrient Broth and then streak it on some agar plate like Macconkey agar and then stain it and try to identify it.

best of luck for work

regards
aftab

[Alyaa Mahmoud]

Thank you soo much for your kind reply : )
I will try growing them in nutrient broth first and hopefully I would be able to reach sth :S

Thankss again
Alyaa