Introduction to Clinical Mycology

Typical Overgrowth of Culture Plate

February 2012

Basically, this is an example of 1 of those plates where you try to culture something and everything in the world is on that plate, probably including what you are looking for, it is just you can’t find it. You notice this has a number of notes on there. Someone saw something in the clinical specimen and said to save the plate because they were going to try and recover it but it grew everything except what they were looking for. So what Smith’s medium allows you to do is to take ammonium hydroxide, a small amount and place it on the side of the culture dish. After it has been inoculated by the clinical specimen, and as you know ammonium hydroxide is a very volatile compound, what happens is it spreads quickly across the plate and as it does it forms a concentration gradient. From the highest concentration where the drop is, as it spreads further it distally and becomes less, and it is like an antibiotic disk and it allows things to be recovered.

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Typical Overgrowth of Culture Plate

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• Introduction
• Introduction to Clinical Mycology
• Culture Variation of Cryptococcus neoformans–Medium Dependent
• Enhancement Supplements for Fungal Recovery Media
• Use of Cycloheximide
• Cycloheximide: Fungi Inhibited
• Aspergillus fumigatus
• Effect of Cycloheximide–Aspergillus niger
• Culture of Coccidioides immitis on a Medium with Cycloheximide
• Treatment of Contaminated Specimens
• Typical Overgrowth of Culture Plate
• Culture of Blastomyces dermatitidis After Ammonium Hydroxide Treatment
• Use of Culture Dishes: Advantages and Disadvantages
• Use of Culture Dishes: Dehydration of Media
• Use of Tubes for Culture: Advantages and Disadvantages
• Use of Culture Tubes
• Incubation of Cultures
• Culture Incubation
• Culture Examination
• Sealing of Culture Dish to Prevent Contamination
• Mitey Big Problem
• Introduction to Clinical Mycology
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