contamination problem - (Jul/24/2008 )

please someone help me out with this very serious problem i am facing. I am working on penicillium fungus and due to poor results , my boss is repeatedly asking me to search whether its a problem of mold contamination. i have prepared number of slides and have done lot of microscopic studies but since i am not able to trace the difference in the two since i suppose the contaminant belongs to the same family.

please let me know if there is any differential medium or selective medium that can be used to test if the contaminant belongs to the same family.
thanking u in advance.

-katinka-

QUOTE (katinka @ Jul 24 2008, 03:59 PM)

not really a direct answer to your question, but are you sure there is any contamination at all? Why do you think there is contamination?
What results do you obtain? What are you testing? Why are you results bad?
What fungus are you working with? What are you doing with it? What kind of research are you doing?

The more details you give, the more people will be able to help you.

and check these:

http://www.apsnet.org/pd/SEARCH/1986/PD_70_254.asp
http://www.springerlink.com/content/pn59845431312n89/
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlere...gi?artid=239051
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal...=1&SRETRY=0
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=A...fe7116599135ef7
http://aem.asm.org/cgi/reprint/60/12/4432.pdf
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6874625

-pito-

As pito asked, why do you think it's contaminated? If you don't know or know how to determine if a mold is contaminated with another mold - tell your prof so he can show you. It's not that hard

-jorge1907-

penicillium is usually the contaminant in other fungal cultures, but nevertheless there are some "difficultly" growing species too....I would agree with pito and jorge you should ask your boss for help.....

And here is a key to the genus penicillium: http://www.cbs.knaw.nl/Penicillium/DefaultPage.aspx
http://www.cbs.knaw.nl/Penicillium/BioloMICSID.aspx

-gebirgsziege-