page_title: Microbiological culture
section_title: Broth cultures
hierarchical_section_title: Microbiological culture / Bacterial culture / Broth cultures
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Kultury sinicy Synechococcus PCC 7002 English: Cyanobacteria Synechococcus PCC 7002 cultures
context_page_description: A microbiological culture, or microbial culture, is a method of multiplying microbial organisms by letting them reproduce in predetermined culture medium under controlled laboratory conditions. Microbial cultures are foundational and basic diagnostic methods used as a research tool in molecular biology.
  Microbial cultures are used to determine the type of organism, its abundance in the sample being tested, or both. It is one of the primary diagnostic methods of microbiology and used as a tool to determine the cause of infectious disease by letting the agent multiply in a predetermined medium. For example, a throat culture is taken by scraping the lining of tissue in the back of the throat and blotting the sample into a medium to be able to screen for harmful microorganisms, such as Streptococcus pyogenes, the causative agent of strep throat. Furthermore, the term culture is more generally used informally to refer to "selectively growing" a specific kind of microorganism in the lab.
  It is often essential to isolate a pure culture of microorganisms. A pure culture is a population of cells or multicellular organisms growing in the absence of other species or types.
context_section_description: One method of bacterial culture is liquid culture, in which the desired bacteria are suspended in a liquid nutrient medium, such as Luria Broth, in an upright flask. This allows a scientist to grow up large amounts of bacteria for a variety of downstream applications.
  Liquid cultures are ideal for preparation of an antimicrobial assay in which the experimenter inoculates liquid broth with bacteria and lets it grow overnight (they may use a shaker for uniform growth). Then they would take aliquots of the sample to test for the antimicrobial activity of a specific drug or protein (antimicrobial peptides).
  As an alternative, the microbiologist may decide to use static liquid cultures. These cultures are not shaken and they provide the microbes with an oxygen gradient.
caption: Liquid cultures of the cyanobacterium Synechococcus PCC 7002
exif: {}