14.

Isolations and
identification of bacteria
Isolation techniques
 direct inoculation
 streaking
 enrichment cultures
identification and classification
 morphological characteristics
 cultural characteristics
biochemical tests
 carbohydrate dissimilation:
 sugar fermentation
 starch hydrolysis
 citrate utilization
 MRVP tests
 proteolytic tests:
 gelatin hydrolysis
 test for hydrogen sulfide
 indole test
 Fermentation and proteolysis of
milk(action on litmus milk) :
 acid clot
 stormy clot
 sweet clot
 peptonization
 Miscellaneous tests
 urease test
 catalase test
 coagulase test
 nitrate reduction
 oxidase test
Rapid identification systems [(eg: API system)
(Analytab products Inc.)]:
stiff plastic strip containing 20 ind. Microtubes, each has a depression.
Each tube contains a dehydrated medium at the bottom.
The dried media is reconstituted into aq form when the inoculum of
the test org is added.
The strip is then incubated
results are read by colour change using charts/computer assisted
identification
serological tests: studies blood serum
and immune responses that are evident in
serum
eg: slide agglutination test: unknown bac drop
into several slides; different known antiserum
is added to each sample; bac agglutinate
when mixed with antibody (positive test)
eg: ELISA
eg: Western blotting
phage typing: determine which phage a
bac is susceptible to. Phages are bacterial
viruses that can cause lysis of the bacterial
cells they infect. Food associated infections
can be traced by phage typing.
Eg: a)plate covered by bac
 b) a drop of different phage is placed on the bac.
 C) If phage infect the bac., the bac will lyse,
clearings appear.
nuclei acid hybridization: the
procedure assumes that if two species are
similar or related, a major portion of their
nucleic acid sequence will also be similar.
The process measures the ability of DNA
strands from one org. to hybridize with the
DNA strands of another org.
eg: southern blotting.
numerical taxonomy: a system that
uses overall degrees of similarity and large #
of characteristics to determine the taxonomic
position of an org.; allows org. of unknown
affiliation to be identified as members of
established taxa; compared by computer.