r/microbiology

Image 1 — A tiny patient, but a pretty serious AST result
Image 2 — A tiny patient, but a pretty serious AST result

A tiny patient, but a pretty serious AST result

Sharing an interesting finding from our lab today.

The patient was just 2 days old. Culture grew Klebsiella pneumoniae, with resistance to multiple antibiotics on AST.

What caught my attention was the ceftazidime–avibactam MIC: 4 µg/mL, interpreted as susceptible in our report.

Looking at an MIC strip on a plate is routine laboratory work—but when you remember that the result belongs to a newborn only two days into life, it suddenly feels very different.

One of those cases that reminds you there is an actual patient behind every plate we read.

Patient-identifying information has not been shared.

u/Beneficial_Tear_3320 — 13 hours ago

Community feedback: new app/project launches?

(Typo apologies in advance.)

With AI has come a book the digital scientific assistant software world. We are seeing a large uptick in similar apps — concentration calculations, unit conversions, colony counting, etc — in recent months. These posts are often market research in the form of thinly veiled questions, like “what would you have found useful?”

All of this has the potential monetize a community meant to be free.

This is ultimately a community decision so your input is invaluable. Please respond to the poll below and share any thoughts you might have.

View Poll

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u/patricksaurus — 19 hours ago

Looking for the origin of the use of "fastidious" for microbes

As the title goes, does anyone know who coined the term "fastidious" to refer to microorganisms that need specific growth factors, which can make them difficult to grow in laboratory conditions. I have tried Google scholar, but I could only go as far back as the 1930s and it seems that "fastidious" was already widely used, so no sources for the term are provided. I find it really frustrating that in our field it is often really hard to find the origin of terms and concepts, particularly for things before the 1950s... Any help is welcome!!

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u/Grouchy_Bus5820 — 21 hours ago

How do you go about identifying an effective antibiotic when MIC testing shows pan resistance?

Is there a way to sequence the organism to find a vulnerability to a less common drug? Is phage use more common now? My mom just got hospitalized with a bug that's resistant to everything in the panel, and im curious what directions doctors can go when this happens.

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u/Dismal_Yogurt3499 — 1 day ago
▲ 2 r/microbiology+1 crossposts

Chicken Incubator for Agar Plates?

Hello!
I have a chicken incubator that hasn’t been used and I don’t plan on using for eggs ever. We need a makeshift incubator to run a DTM culture on two kittens that have/had ringworm (week 4 of treatment) because we have to wait for a manufactured incubator to be approved by the budget. If it won’t work, any quick and easy ideas? Thanks!

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u/stargazingkitt — 1 day ago
▲ 2 r/microbiology+1 crossposts

Spread plate

Is this considered a good distribution using the spread plate method, or is there a defect in the plating?

u/lestermallll — 1 day ago

Any sample suggestions for the daily isolation?(no skin flora or fusobacteria places)

I am asking this because I can’t really think of much right now, so I’m probably just gonna end up doing soil again since I had the most fun with that. I’m preparing to do the daily isolation again. After many weeks of work, I made fresh ISP2A plates, NA plates, SCA plates, CGXII, CGXIIA plates, Christensen’s urease agar plates, MacConkey agar plates, TSI slants, NB, BPW + glycerol, and PBS. I’m also going to make BG11A and BG11 and SIM medium in a couple days, and then I’ll start streaking. I’m just waiting on my ferrous ammonium sulfate and sodium nitrate to arrive for it. I can also make BHI and BHIA and stuff with Tween 80 and 20 in it. I also have Instant Ocean with germanic acid for some diatom-free marine culturing if anyone suggests that.
I just inoculated some SCA with soil again to start up my actinomycetes train again. Funnily enough, I think I was making it wrong for all those isolations in the past. I used casein enzymatic hydrolysate instead of undigested casein. This time I used some micellar casein I had on hand. I hope it’s more selective even with the colistin, nalidixic acid, and cycloheximide I put in it.

u/SpiriRoam — 2 days ago

Is a medical microbiologst a good career path?

Now in this day and time is it a good choice? Can you easily find a job? What about the money is it good pay? Do you enjoy the job or is it bad experience? Instead of medical microbiologist should I just stick with microbiologist? What is the salary for this career, is it high or low?

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u/QuietFine8724 — 2 days ago

How to extract DNA from fecal samples stored in liquid nitrogen?

Hi everyone,

I need to extract DNA from cecal/fecal samples stored in liquid nitrogen using the QIAamp PowerFecal Pro DNA Kit, which requires up to 250 mg of sample. What is the best way to handle the frozen samples to weigh 250 mg while minimising thawing? Any recommended protocols or practical tips would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

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u/Ok-Air9195 — 2 days ago

What is this?

Petri dish with agar jelly. Bacterial sample was drawn in a straight line in the centre of the dish and found this growing at the side of the dish. The photo is bad because the dish was in a sealed plastic bag, but the black 'dots' are in some kind of light white fuzz.
Thanks!

u/korokcollector — 2 days ago

Who am I meeting with here?

Sample of suspected periglandula fungus collected from the exterior of a plant (shown in last slide) and suspended in mineral oil.

I wish that I would have taken some more deliberate photos, but these are from me and my roommate basically celebrating our new microscope and taking basic photos of various samples.

I am completely new to the microscopic world, and I know you can't id from photo alone, but could any of you help me make sense of what all I might be seeing here? I would benefit from the most basic of info

u/PracticeLife9295 — 2 days ago

Are these fungus?

Fellow microbiologists, please help me know if these are fungal contamination in my cell culture?

u/PriorRepair1092 — 3 days ago

MacConkey Plate: color preference

These are two different brands of MAC. Does the “level of pinkness” really matter? One is giving off salmon pink and one is showing magenta pink. Give your honest opinion about the growth and which one is better.

u/Background_Point_449 — 4 days ago

Microbiologists, I need your help. I made a free iOS app and would love your feedback and feature ideas

Hey guys! I’m a PhD student, and I originally made this app for myself. I then thought it might be useful for others, so I decided to publish it on the AppStore.

There’s absolutely no commercial motive. The app is completely free, and I just want to help my colleagues.

The biggest problem is: it’s extremely difficult to get the app in front of people. Most communities don’t allow app promotion, and obviously I can’t afford to pay for advertising.

So, I’d really appreciate it if you could share it with other people.
I’m open to all kinds of feedback, positive or negative, so please be honest.

If there’s a feature you’d like to see, let me know. I may be able to add it in the next few days.

Since I’m posting this in a microbiology community, I’d especially love to hear from microbiologists about what would actually be useful. I don’t have many microbiology-specific features at the moment, so if there’s something you regularly need, find annoying, or wish you had an app for, I’d really appreciate your suggestions.

Thanks a lot!
The link and more detailed information are on my profile.

https://preview.redd.it/a0p013s3tejh1.jpg?width=2478&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fe2500dd5958e2ba9fdc04d1e390a24e59cb9d1c

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u/iOS_App_LabAssistant — 5 days ago

Career advice please!!

Actually my friend is going to graduate in bsc.microbiology (ug) in few months, now she,s planning to join msc in food tech

Can someone switch to food tech from microbiology for pg ?

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u/Bablu_0 — 5 days ago

How do microorganisms move?

Apologies for what is probably a simple question

I was never a big biology or even chemistry guy (went down physics and engineering instead :P) but have recently started watching some youtuber who talks about microbiology and its really interesting!

My question though is how do microorganisms move? Like I understand broadly enough how we move with electrical signals causing our muscles to contract, but do microbes do the same sort of thing? I know that they move through a space using cilia or flagella or pseudopods, etc, but how do they get these parts to move? I've tried to do some googling but it all kinda quickly devolves into a bunch of jargon that I just don't have the background to understand.

Thanks for any help! :)

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u/Aarcadia_Ego — 5 days ago

Any ideas how to EASY clean spots on glasa bottle from sterilization tape?

We tried few stuff, it just doesn't go away or hardly it does. Any suggestions?

u/mrspudgerino — 7 days ago