Bacteria are frequently found as contaminants in cell cultures. However, cell cultures sometimes lack visual signs of the bacterial contamination, such as fast decoloration of the medium. In addition, it has been demonstrated that standard antibiotics are mostly ineffective against resistant bacterial infection but have a strong impact on the metabolism, growth, and differentiation of the cells in culture.
Frequent screening of cell cultures for bacterial contamination is essential to ensure reliable results. Therefore, PromoKine offers a PCR-based Bacteria Test Kit that has been developed for accurate and reliable in vitro diagnosis of 45 bacteria species, which are the common contaminants in cell cultures (e.g. Actinomyces, Bacillus, Enterococcus, Escherichia coli, Fusobacterium, Klebsiella, Lactobacillus, Micrococcus, Mycobacterium, Peptostreptococcus, Pseudomonas, Porphyromonas, Prevotella, Salmonella, Serratia, Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, etc.). The kit provides a highly sensitive, easy, and rapid method to detect bacterial infection in various biological materials, including cell cultures. Detection requires as little as 12 bacteria genomes (~52 fg) per sample volume. The protocol can be completed within 3.5 hours with a hands-on time of less than 40 minutes. The kit contains all the necessary components for setting up a PCR including a positive control DNA as well as an internal control DNA to confirm a successfully performed PCR run. The kit does not amplify eukaryotic DNA.
Figure: Bacteria detection with the PromoKine PCR Bacteria Test Kit is easy and convenient: Purify bacterial DNA from 200 – 500 µl of cell culture supernatant using an appropriate DNA extraction kit; add 5 µl sample DNA to the reaction cup with the premixed PCR components and Taq polymerase; start PCR run; analyze PCR products by agarose gel electrophoresis.
