Confused about what media to use... - general media or minimal media foe shewanella oneidensis MR1.. (Apr/17/2008 )
Hi everybody
i have just joined my department as a research assisstant and the first job given to me to order the specific media that i would be using to culture shewanella oneidensis MR-1 strain for using it in a microbial fuel cell. my supervisor told me that he has no experience in culturing microbes and since i have a biotechnology background he has hired me to do the biology part of it.
well i have cultured bacterial strains before (using nutrient agar) but i have never cultured one to be used in a reactor such as microbial fuel cell or a chemostat.. i wud be buying the bacterial strain from ATCC (no. 700550) and the media that they recommend is Trypticase Soy Agar (i.e. ATCC medium 18, atleast thats what is their code for it). but confusion started wen i was reading thru various papers for materials and methods on culturing shewanella. most of the papers mention that they use a chemically defined media (with a hell no. of powder additions, stuffs like NaH2PO4, FeCl2.H2O and blah blah blah..).
now what i am confused about is whether do i cultur the media using the media suggested by ATCC or follow the media preparations in the various research papers on MFCs using shewanella? or is it that i need to mass culture the microbe using ATCC media or TSA and use the chemically defined for growth in the reactor? and do i need to add the hell no. of individual components one by one or are there any ready package available for such minimal media??? 
help is appreciated greatly... need a solution ASAP as i need to order stuff as my prof is urging to start the work asap... 
thanks a lot... 
i have just joined my department as a research assisstant and the first job given to me to order the specific media that i would be using to culture shewanella oneidensis MR-1 strain for using it in a microbial fuel cell. my supervisor told me that he has no experience in culturing microbes and since i have a biotechnology background he has hired me to do the biology part of it.
well i have cultured bacterial strains before (using nutrient agar) but i have never cultured one to be used in a reactor such as microbial fuel cell or a chemostat.. i wud be buying the bacterial strain from ATCC (no. 700550) and the media that they recommend is Trypticase Soy Agar (i.e. ATCC medium 18, atleast thats what is their code for it). but confusion started wen i was reading thru various papers for materials and methods on culturing shewanella. most of the papers mention that they use a chemically defined media (with a hell no. of powder additions, stuffs like NaH2PO4, FeCl2.H2O and blah blah blah..).
now what i am confused about is whether do i cultur the media using the media suggested by ATCC or follow the media preparations in the various research papers on MFCs using shewanella? or is it that i need to mass culture the microbe using ATCC media or TSA and use the chemically defined for growth in the reactor? and do i need to add the hell no. of individual components one by one or are there any ready package available for such minimal media???
help is appreciated greatly... need a solution ASAP as i need to order stuff as my prof is urging to start the work asap...
thanks a lot...
there are a lot of media you can use.
Some are better, others are not...
It also depends on what you want to archieve.
I would suject to find a researchpaper in wich they describe the growth of shewanella oneidensis MR-1 to use it as a biofuel. If you do not find any literature specificly about the use of shewanella oneidensis MR-1 for biofuel then just check papers that describe a media used to grow shewanella oneidensis MR-1. Every researcher has his own little idea about the ideal medium.
The atcc standards are good to use, but sometimes it can be handy to adjust them a bit.
+ it might be a medium just to use to grow the shewanella oneidensis MR-1 and not to grow the shewanella oneidensis MR-1 to use it as a biofuel. Maybe you need some specific characteristic in your shewanella oneidensis MR-1 to use it as a good biofuel. So it then depends on what sort of additives you use.
(to make this more clear: when just cultering a fungus you can use a standard medium, but when you want the fungus to form more spores you can put the fungus on a nutrienpoor medium... This is just a very very simple example, I hope you do understand my point?)
It might not be bad to check some literature and maybe find 2-5 media used and use them too.
So instead of starting with 1 medium, start with eg. 5 and see what medium works the best for you...
And after a while you can swith to 1 medium that is good and easy to use.
PS. in some researchpapers they indeed describe media with the chemical formulation, but sometimes its just the same effect as using a drink or some juice....
An example: I used a drink called V8 to grow a certain fungus...
You just need to check out for yourself and search a bit around.
No one can tell you: use this and only this because this is the best....