6 key ingredients in the formulation of microbial lab media?

Answer 1

I'm not sure there are exactly six considerations that are universally accepted for preparing plates for microbial media. But I took down a list of things I think are important, and there turn out to be six of them, so maybe that's what you're looking for:

STAGE - Which is to say, something for your culture to be on or in. Agar is almost universally used for this as a base component of gels because almost nothing can digest it and it's resistant to most temperatures in use.

NUTRIENTS - Depending on what, exactly, you're culturing, you had better make sure it has all the minimal vitamins and minerals that it requires for survival, or it won't! I also tend to include in this the ability to handle wastes - some organisms will choke in their own waste if it doesn't diffuse away (another good quality of agar is its diffusiveness!), and some few need extra stuff to neutralize out waste effects.

ENERGY - Some might consider this a kind of nutrient, but when mixing media it's usually something entirely seperate that you add. Some things can break down extra nutrients for energy, of course, and there is a lot of overlap between this and the next consideration...

SELECTIVITY - Often it's not enough that you can grow what you want to look at... it's just as (if not more) important that you don't get other stuff growing there as well. Selectivity in a plate is often created by adding something poisonous to competing organisms, and it's also often created by careful selection of nutrient and energy sources that favor your desired organism and are unusable by others.

VISIBILITY - Of course, it doesn't much matter WHAT you grow if you can't see it. Agar is nicely transparent, but some things added to it make it opaque, which is no good if much of your culture occurs beneath the surface (especially with anaerobic stuff!).

CONSISTENCY - The desired viscosity of the media can be a very important consideration depending on the experiment. If your media is too solid, you won't see any movement within it, and if it's too liquid it acts poorly as a stage. So sometimes you modify the mixture specifically for this concern.

Hope that's what you're looking for! Happy culturing!

Answer 2

Depends what you want to grow on the media. Nutrient agar is good for most bacteria, you can add things to this depending on what you want to grow, for example malt, starch, yeast etc. You can also use plain agar (no nutrients added). If you don't want agar plates you can make nutrient broth, adding different things again. Basically you need agar(or broth), nutrients or whatever you want to add, distilled water, autoclave and that's about it.

Answer 3

eye of newt, ear of bat, green moonstone, crushed elf legs, goblins amulet and a sprinkle of stardust.

oh sorry thats the formula to open the gates of garrash

Answer 4

books,test tubes,bunsen burners,microscopes,tweezers,and a white coat,lol.