Introduction to Clinical Mycology

Mitey Big Problem

February 2012

There is a problem that you run into sometimes, a mitey big problem. And you can see that these happen to be media mites. Media mites get into cultures and they can contaminate 1 plate from another. I often joke and say, “You know how you can tell if you have mites in your cultures? You look for their tracks.” And you can see there are tracks as they walk through a culture. It is interesting some of these mites have a preference for which organism they like to eat. In our laboratory, that happens to be Penicillium, and they will walk through a colony of Penicillium, and they will walk around the culture plate, and you can see later where they’ve walked. You will see tiny colonies appearing as they walked around. So that is another reason that they are in sealed bags.

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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
• Questions