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Fungi contamination in cell culture work



Fungi contamination in cell culture work

Fungi contamination is commonly seen in cell culture work. Here is an old discussion thread from bio newsgroup on fungi contamination and use of antibiotics.

We have comme across several cultivations of mammalian cells being "infected" by fibric material. The media we are using is made up from pulver and then sterile filtered, tested for (bacterial) infection. When running continous processes after 2/3 weeks or so we encounter clogging due to some fibres that attached to our reactor inside. Of course we did sterile testing before. To insure we can do the experiments we want to do we add antibiotics, penicillin/streptomycin/neomycin. All material is from GIBCO or Sigma, approved quality.

Is it reasonble to believe that the fungii we saw under the
microscopes/scanning microscopes are imported through the antibiotics ?
As antibiotics are produced from fungii, could it be that during
downstreamprocessing the spores are not totally removed, and end up in the
suspensions ?
Does anyone have had similiar experience/thoughts ?
Should I fight the fungii with antimycotica ?



I always filter-sterilize my media after adding everything,
including the antibiotics if I use them. I never get infected cultures
except when using plates rather than flasks to culture cells. In
plates, an occasional spore gets in when transporting the plates
between the incubator and the hood or scope.
I rarely use antibiotics or anti-mycotics. They should not
be necessary and they often affect the growth of the mammalian cells
as well.
--
********************************************************************
* Brian Foley


If you are using cell culture grade antibiotic solutions from GIBCO,
then it is not reasonable

Last update 01-Jan-2002, Rating Good of 12 votes.


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