Dear Ciliate Community,
I am struggling with contamination in my Tetrahymena cultures for a while. Routinely used antibiotics (pen-strep, amphotericin) don't work. I used normocin from Invitrogen in conbination with pen-strep or kanamycin to get rid of them but no success again. Contaminated wells appear whitish and cloudy (Please see attachment). I noticed that this contamination generally occurs after biolistic bombardment. Sterile cabinet was tested for the possible contamination source but it seems OK. I extensively sterilize the inner chamber of the biolistic gun (which is in our sterile cabinet) and other components with alcohol prior to shot but they show up during passaging when I increase the pm concentration for example.
Many thanks in advance for your any kind of suggestions.
Best regards.
--
Erhan Aslan
Anadolu University
Graduate School of Sciences
Department of Molecular Biology
Eskisehir-Turkey
Save the environment.Please don't print this email unless you really have to.