Staining techniques

[rakuenso]

Hello, still being the newbie to microbiology I am, can someone give me some staining directions for shoe bacteria and fungus? Since right now they are pretty much white and transparent.

[ecoli]

Here's alink that could help you out... http://www.hometrainingtools.com/articles/microscope-slide-stains-science-teaching-tip.html

 

Good luck

[rakuenso]

they only seem to be selling Eosin Y and Methlyene blue, and only small quantities of 15ml. I'm not exactly sure how effective those two products are.

[ecoli]

Well, it depends what you want to stain, doesn't it. If you could be more specific, perhaps I could give you a better link, more appropriate for you.

[ed84c]

Personally i would just trial out some household inks etc. and see which works best.

[ed84c]

If some are white, could you not just use a black background?

[rakuenso]

My agar it self is white due to the lactose and other various materials

[Krul]

I am currently following the education for medical laborant and we work with staining techniques a lot ( although not with plant staning off course ).

 

Under the microscope most cells, plant or animal will be white/transparant. Staining is necessary to create contrast.

 

For bacteria the most commonly used staining technique is the Gram-staining, it will give a nice contrast in blue-purple depending on whether the bacteria is Gram positive or negative.

 

You can also use the Gram-staining on fungi, it will color the hyphes ( the "arms/wires" ) of the fungus Gram positive and the spores will be colored Gram negative.

 

Gram staining is quite easy to do, in our lab we don't really use it, but if I remember correct it shouldn't take long either.

 

To get a really good result there are a variety of staining techinques available, however to get the materials/chemicals can be costly.

 

If you have a lot of money though, you can do the PAS-reaction or the Grocott-reaction for fungi, and depending on the type of bacteria there are specialized staining techniques available as well.

 

Here is an indication of the chemicals you need to do a REAL staining like the PAS-reaction:

 

- alcohol 70%, 96%, 100%

- Xylene

- aquabidest/aquadest

- PerIodineacid 1%

- Schiff's solution ( best to buy it in the solution already )

- Acid sulfite solution

- Haematoxylin

- Running tapwater available

- A enclosure medium, Malinol for example.

 

 

As I said I do stains for medical stuff, so you can probably skip steps/chemicals. No need to work as accurate when it's just a bacteria or fungus right?

 

And I might have spelled the chemicals wrong, I am Dutch so I don't know all the names in English.