C6 Cells Contaminated - What do you think it is? (Sep/13/2006 )

I know that I must've introduced something bad into two of my flasks. When I checked on two of my flasks of C6 cells there was something obviously wrong. One flask had media that was bright yellow and when I tilted it the media slid down the side of the flask like it was jello. My other flask was not as bad, but was begining to form congealed areas. It was very weird looking. I'm not too sure what the contamination is or even if it is something living.

Here are two pictures I took of the badly affected flask through the micoscope (4X objective):





Any ideas as to what it could be?

well it seems to be filamentous...
So will have a hand for a fungus contamination or sthg like that.
It may not be bacterial. I've faced my first contamination (grrrrrrrrrr ) from bacterias and it's a very rouble medium that appears. Fungi normally have someadherence for the plastic haven't they?

You may try amphotericine B.

I agree with Fred: it looks like a fungus. With bacteria you usually see that the medium becomes clouudy and you can see a kind of dust in it. Here you can see these filaments... very much like fungus!

It's a fungus Jamie. I've seen this "gel" appear sporadically more than once over the years. Throw out your cultures ASAP - it's not worth trying to treat and you don't want to risk it infecting your other cultures.

Luckily I had backups for this cell line so I threw it out immediately after I took pictures of it. I was just dying to know what it was and I had guessed fungus ... so I guessed correctly. All of my other cell lines look okay so far, but do you think they could be at high risk for contamination as well? I just cleaned out my incubator about a week ago and my hood ... so it's very scary that I got a contaminated cell line. However, I believe it was poor technique on my part in the hood as I had been under a bit of stress and may not have been as careful as I should have been. THANK YOU SO MUCH for all of your replies.

well check the filter of the hood if you're wondering. But i assume it was more like a manip mistake rather than global contamination. In that case your current cultures should have been contaminated too.

This sort of contamination has always appeared sporadically in our lab (very infrequently I'm fortunate to say), usually affecting only one or two cultures.

Most of our cultures are primaries which can't be replaced and this fungus is our most feared contamination. As you've said, it turns your cultures to jelly overnight. I think it's an Aspergillus of some type. Do you thaw/warm any of your reagents in a waterbath? That might be the source. Otherwise it's likely to be an isolated handling error as you've suggested.