Spores sticking to pipetting tip - (Aug/11/2009 )

I'm having some issues doing serial dilutions with spores. I feel like a lot of the spores get stuck to each other at the tip of the micropipette, especially since when I dilute straight from the stock, I get substantial germination, but when I go a concentration lower (via serial dilution), I get very little germination. Any suggestions as to how I can "de-stick" the spores? Is it how I'm pipetting?

Thanks for any advice.

-kungfoofengshui-

kungfoofengshui on Aug 11 2009, 07:27 AM said:

No idea at all about the spores. But if you don't get any specific response, you can do this:

When stuff sticks to my pipette tip in my experiments, I sometimes avoid it by coating the pipette with albumin. You just take your pipette tip or micropipette, suck a little bit of 10% albumin and pipette it out. Now the pipette is most likely to be non-sticky. No guarantees, though. Let us know what worked for you.

-cellcounter-

A detergent as Tween might help. Low concentration just to reduce water tension and stickiness. Just for a try out.

-hobglobin-