Posts Tagged ‘Antibiotics’
Antibiotic Disposal in the Lab: Simple Tips to Get it Right
Have you ever given thought to how you are disposing of antibiotics in the lab and whether or not it’s correct? Discover the problems associated with improper antibiotic disposal and how to correctly dispose of different antibiotics in the lab.
Read MoreSelection Pressures: Alternatives to Antibiotics in Molecular Cloning
Want to reduce the use of antibiotics in the lab? Start with switching to alternative cloning methods that use alternative selection pressures.
Read MoreWhat’s The Problem With Ampicillin Selection?
Resistance to the antibiotic ampicillin is commonly used as a selection marker for plasmids in gene cloning and protein expression in E.coli and other bacteria. While it can be incredibly useful tool, there can be problems using this selection marker that you need to be aware of if if you plan on using it. This…
Read MoreAntibiotics Used in Molecular Biology
Antibiotics are used in a wide range of techniques in molecular biology including molecular cloning and are important for treating pesky mycoplasma contamination in cell cultures. They can also be used to maximize your plasmid yields by reducing protein synthesis, in certain circumstances. The aim of this post is to provide an easy reference to…
Read More“Viable But Non-Culturable (VBNC)”: Zombies of the Bacterial World
Imagine that you want to test the efficiency of an antimicrobial treatment in inhibiting a certain bacterial pathogen. As part of the experiment, you expose the bacteria to the treatment and monitor the cultivability of the microorganism by counting the number of colony forming units (CFU) formed on culture media. If the microorganism is sensitive…
Read MoreThe World of Microbes Part 1: Antibiotics and Vaccines
The world as we know it couldn’t exist without microbes. It is estimated that there are tens of trillions of bacteria living just in and on humans. (Ewww?) One trillion has 12 zeros. To put that in perspective, the entire human population on earth is only 7.3 billion with a measly 9 zeros. With that many microbes…
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