CONTAMINATION OF TISSUE CULTURES WITH PLEUROPNEUMONIALIKE ORGANISMS (PPLO),

Conclusions Subinoculated cultures of Detroit-6, HLS, KB, Hep-2, Sots, ERK, HeLa, APO and amniotic FL cells, obtained from various laboratories, were contaminated with pleuropneumonialike organisms. This must be taken into consideration when working with these cultures. The contamination of initial cultures of trypsin treated monkey and rabbit kidneys and human and chick embryo fibroblasts with pleuropneumonia-like organisms was insignificant 3-4, which, however, must be kept in mind, since some of these cultures are used in the production of biologicals. For the determination of the contamination of cultures it is convenient to make use of the seeding of the cultural liquid on 0.3 agar with normal horse serum, on which the pleuropneumonialike organisms form colonies of a typical morphology, and are exposed in the phase contrast microscope without the application of special staining methods. The use of the antibiotic mycerin makes it possible to purify stable tissue cultures from pleuropneumonialike organisms. Author