Arrggghhh...Bacterial Contamination!!!

In what I call "The worst bacterial contamination possibly " in IMU Research Lab history, it caused quite a stir for me here at the postgraduate lab. I absolutely did not know what to do. It kinda was like a brick fell on my teeny-weeny little toes. Minus the swelling, it caused quite an equal amount of pain emotionally. I had to dump 9 out of 10 of my culture flasks.

Bacteria was literally swimming through their self-made currents in the medium which was supposed to sustain and allow growth of my breast cancer cells. It turned out that I have been breeding Bacillus and Cocci species along with my poor MCF 7 cells throughout the weekend.

Dr. Yiap told me to pray....

And I said, "Ya, OK so that the cells can grow."

He said, "No. Not just that. So that bacteria wouldn't grow together with your cells!!!."

Ok, Ya I did pray. But it seems that it only worked for the previous batch. The one where Dr. Yiap had last handled the cells before he passed them to me.

Hmmm....

The Bacilli was wriggling in the medium, sort of twitching back and forth from head to tail, ok that's if they actually had those parts anatomically speaking. Maybe they have a head cause at higher power they really had those small bobs at one end. For the cocci, it was more like a bit of swimming plus a little bit of vibratory movements.

My cell culture turn out to be a bacteria culture. What a waste of lab resources. Cell Culture guru, Bazlin came and confirm my suspicion, and she let off a soft "Ewww...." and immediately she told me that I have to dispose of it but before that each of the contaminated flasks had to be bleached before disposing them.

Iggy had a great time looking and feeling geli by the bacteria. Pictures were taken also but sorry no photos at the moment, maybe later on.

But really, it is an invaluable experience to see how bacteria look like in a contaminated cell culture flask. I say this not in the sense of having pride from this achievement but as a lesson that should be learn.

*****From now on, I have to really be careful on my sterile techniques. Probably I shouldn't start off with too many culture flasks.*****