Addgene: Protocol - How to Inoculate a Bacterial Culture (2024)

  • Protocols
  • Inoculating a Liquid Bacterial Culture

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Background Information

Plasmids can carry one or more antibiotic resistance genes, which confer resistance to a specific antibiotic to the bacteria carrying them. The presence of an antibiotic resistance gene on a plasmids allows researchers to easily isolate bacteria containing that plasmid from bacteria that do not contain it by artificial selection (i.e. growing the bacteria in the presence of the antibiotic).

Luria broth (LB) is a nutrient-rich media commonly used to culture bacteria in the lab. LB agar plates are frequently used to isolate individual (clonal) colonies of bacteria carrying a specific plasmid. However, a liquid culture is capable of supporting a higher density of bacteria and is used to grow up sufficient numbers of bacteria necessary to isolate enough plasmid DNA for experimental use. The following protocol is for inoculating an overnight culture of liquid LB with bacteria.

Video

Watch the protocol video below to learn how to inoculate bacteria in liquid culture.

Protocol

  1. Prepare liquid LB. For example, to make 400 mL of LB, weigh out the following into a 500 mL glass bottle:
    • 4 g NaCl
    • 4 g Tryptone
    • 2 g Yeast Extract
    • and dH2O to 400 mL

    Note: If your lab has pre-mixed LB agar powder, use the suggested amount, instead of the other dry ingredients above.

    Media without growth (top) and with growth (bottom)

    Addgene: Protocol - How to Inoculate a Bacterial Culture (1)
    Addgene: Protocol - How to Inoculate a Bacterial Culture (2)
    Loosely close the cap on the bottle (do NOT close all the way or the bottle may explode!) and then loosely cover the entire top of the bottle with aluminum foil. Autoclave and allow to cool to room temperature. Now screw on the top of the bottle and store the LB at room temperature.
  2. When ready to grow your culture, add liquid LB to a tube or flask and add the appropriate antibiotic to the correct concentration (see table below).

    Note: If you intend to do a mini-prep you will usually want to start 2 mL in a falcon tube, but for larger preps you might want to use as much as a liter of LB in a 2 L Erlenmeyer flask.

  3. Using a sterile pipette tip or toothpick, select a single colony from your LB agar plate.
  4. Drop the tip or toothpick into the liquid LB + antibiotic and swirl.
  5. Loosely cover the culture with sterile aluminum foil or a cap that is not air tight.
  6. Incubate bacterial culture at 37°C for 12-18 hr in a shaking incubator.

    Note: Some plasmids or strains require growth at 30°C. If so, you will likely need to grow for a longer time to get the correct density of bacteria since they will grow more slowly at lower temperatures.

  7. After incubation, check for growth, which is characterized by a cloudy haze in the media (see right).

    Notes:

    • Some protocols require bacteria to be in the log phase of growth. Check the instructions for your specific protocol and conduct an OD600 to measure the density of your culture if needed.
    • A good negative control is LB media + antibiotic without any bacteria inoculated. You should see no growth in this culture after overnight incubation.
  8. Optional: For long term storage of the bacteria, you can proceed with Creating a Glycerol Stock.
  9. You can now isolate your plasmid DNA from the bacterial culture by following Isolating Your Plasmid DNA.

Antibiotic Concentrations

Commonly Used Antibiotics Recommended Concentration
Ampicillin 100 µg/mL
Bleocin 5 µg/mL
Carbenicillin 100 µg/mL
Chloramphenicol 25 µg/mL
Coumermycin 25 µg/mL
Gentamycin 10 µg/mL
Kanamycin 50 µg/mL
Spectinomycin 50 µg/mL
Tetracycline 10 µg/mL

Tips and FAQ

Addgene: Protocol - How to Inoculate a Bacterial Culture (3)

What is the difference between high copy and low copy plasmids?

The copy number refers to the number of copies of an individual plasmid within a single bacterial cell. Large plasmids usually have a low copy number (approximately one or two copies per cell) and they need to grow for longer periods of time (approximately 18-30 hr). On the other hand, smaller plasmids can be present in large numbers, 50 or more per cell and have a high copy number. High copy number plasmids should only need to be grown for 12-16 hr on average. Certain features of a plasmid may render it low copy regardless of plasmid size. See the plasmid's info page to determine if your plasmid is high or low copy.

I didn't get any growth after overnight incubation. What went wrong?

Try growing the culture for more time. Some bacterial cultures grow more slowly. Also, bacteria incubated at 30°C rather than 37°C often require longer incubation times.

Double check that the antibiotic in your LB media matches the antibiotic resistance on your plasmid.

If the bacteria on your LB agar plates are not fresh, you should streak your bacteria onto a new LB agar plate before growing in liquid culture.

More aeration may help to increase the density of the culture. Normally cultures shake at 150 - 250 rpm, increase this to 350 - 400 rpm to obtain a higher cell density.

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Addgene: Protocol - How to Inoculate a Bacterial Culture (2024)

FAQs

Addgene: Protocol - How to Inoculate a Bacterial Culture? ›

Using a sterile pipette tip or toothpick, select a single colony from your LB

LB
Lysogeny broth (LB) is a nutritionally rich medium primarily used for the growth of bacteria. Its creator, Giuseppe Bertani, intended LB to stand for lysogeny broth, but LB has also come to colloquially mean Luria broth, Lennox broth, life broth or Luria–Bertani medium.
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Lysogeny_broth
agar plate. Drop the tip or toothpick into the liquid LB + antibiotic and swirl. Loosely cover the culture with sterile aluminum foil or a cap that is not air tight. Incubate bacterial culture at 37°C for 12-18 hr in a shaking incubator.

How to inoculate bacterial culture? ›

Inoculate the liquid with a single bacterial colony by touching a sterile inoculating loop, needle, toothpick, or applicator stick to the colony, making certain that some of the cells have been transferred, and then dipping the inoculating loop, needle, or tip of the stick or toothpick into the liquid and shaking it a ...

How do you inoculate a liquid bacterial culture protocol? ›

Procedure
  1. Add 1000X kanamycin to the LB so that the final concentration is 1X. Swirl to mix.
  2. Using a pipette tip, touch a single colony on the plate.
  3. Touch the pipette tip to the LB in the bacterial culture tube and lightly swirl. At least one cell must remain in the media.
  4. Grow at 37°C overnight while shaking.

What are the methods of bacteria inoculation? ›

Bacteria and other microbes can be inoculated into various media where they thrive. This process of inoculation is carried out in different media such as – plate culture, slant culture, agar plates, stab culture, sweep plate method, and so on.

How to prepare bacterial inoculum? ›

Bacterial vegetative cells and spores are suspended in sterile tap water or sterile saline, which is then added to the broth. In case of nonsporulating fungi and actinomycetes, hyphae are used for inoculum, and then transferred to the final solution.

How do you inoculate properly? ›

Inoculating a Plate from a Broth Culture
  1. Sterilize the inoculating loop.
  2. Remove the cap from tube. ...
  3. Flame the lip of the tube.
  4. Place sterile portion of inoculating loop into broth, then remove.
  5. Flame the lip of the tube.
  6. Replace the cap.
  7. Gently streak the surface of an agar plate with the inoculating loop.
Mar 19, 2021

How much overnight culture to inoculate? ›

Growth of standard expression cultures (100 ml)

Grow the cultures overnight at 37°C. Inoculate 100 ml prewarmed medium (with antibiotics) with 5 ml of the overnight culture and grow at 37°C with vigorous shaking until an OD600 of 0.6 is reached (30–60 min).

What happens if you incubate bacteria too long? ›

If a bacterial culture is left in the same media for too long, the cells use up the available nutrients, excrete toxic metabolites, and eventually the entire population will die. Thus bacterial cultures must be periodically transferred, or subcultured, to new media to keep the bacterial population growing.

How much inoculum is needed when transferring culture? ›

At each step, the inoculum is used at 0.5–5% of the medium volume, which allows a 200-fold increase in inoculum volume at every step. Mostly, the inoculum used for the production stage is approximately 5% of the medium volume, or it can be adjusted to obtain maximum fermentor productivity.

What are 3 types of bacteria culturing method? ›

Culture methods
MethodDescription
Liquid/broth culturesOrganisms are inoculated into a flask of liquid media
Agar platesOrganisms are placed or streaked onto petri dishes
Agar based dipsticksEssentially miniature agar plates in the form of dipsticks
2 more rows

What is the direct method of inoculation? ›

In direct inoculation, a small volume of sample is removed aseptically from the sample unit and inoculated directly into a suitable volume of growth medium before incubation. While simple, this method of testing can have some significant limitations.

What are the processes of inoculation? ›

inoculation, process of producing immunity that consists of introduction of the infectious agent into the body. Historically, inoculation involved introducing the infectious agent onto an abraded or absorptive skin surface.

How do you inoculate bacteria protocol? ›

Using a sterile pipette tip or toothpick, select a single colony from your LB agar plate. Drop the tip or toothpick into the liquid LB + antibiotic and swirl. Loosely cover the culture with sterile aluminum foil or a cap that is not air tight. Incubate bacterial culture at 37°C for 12-18 hr in a shaking incubator.

How do you inoculate bacteria on agar? ›

There are two methods for inoculating (putting the bacteria on) agar plates: quadrant streaking and spread plating. Which one you choose depends on what you want to do after. The quadrant streaking technique is used to isolate single colonies of one or more types of bacteria or fungi.

How do you culture bacteria step by step? ›

Pour plate method
  1. Prepare a serial dilution of your mixed sample.
  2. Transfer 1 ml of each dilution into a separate Petri dish.
  3. Pour molten agar into the Petri dishes.
  4. Rotate the plates to ensure mixing of the sample and agar.
  5. Incubate the plates.
Dec 12, 2022

How do you inoculate plants with bacteria? ›

Some bacteria can be mixed in or sprinkled on the soil during planting. Others need to be revitalized from a dormant state and cultivated by hand—usually by adding a measurement of granules into water.

What are the steps of inoculation in plant tissue culture? ›

Inoculation is carried out under aseptic conditions. In this process explants or micro shoots are transferred on to the sterilized nutrient medium. species and sometimes during the various stages of developments. The cultures are observed daily for growth and any signs of infection/ contamination.

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