The Biosphere

« first day (1775 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (2739 days later) »

4:38 AM

I wonder what "non-culturable mycoplasma" is. Can there really be bacteria resistant to culturing?

Viable but nonculturable (VBNC) bacteria refers to bacteria that are in a state of very low metabolic activity and do not divide, but are alive and have the ability to become culturable once resuscitated. Bacteria in a VBNC state cannot grow on standard growth media, though flow cytometry can measure the viability of the bacteria. Bacteria can enter the VBNC state as a response to stress, due to adverse nutrient, temperature, osmotic, oxygen, and light conditions. The cells that are in the VBNC state are morphologically smaller, and demonstrate reduced nutrient transport, rate of respiration, and...

ah, this is probably related to my query

CowperKettle

4:52 AM

> The expression “viable but nonculturable” (VNC) bacteria, describes cells that cannot normally be cultured. However this makes little sense, when one considers that the demonstration of culturability remains the best practically acceptable definition of viability. So a better explanation of the status of these bacteria would be “not immediately culturable”.

Ebbinghaus

@Chris You're welcome and thanks to you as well. Ah right, would I then just raise a moderator flag, and flag it as too trivial, or how would I approach it?

Yeah, I just thought that the text had an odd vibe to it.

CowperKettle

5:11 AM

now this is odd

7 hours later…

CowperKettle

12:35 PM

> In the second stage of analysis, degenerate primers are used to amplify a 400-nucleotide fragment of the gene, after which the this DNA fragment is sequenced from the same degenerate primers.

Can we "sequence" a fragment attached to primers?