Abstract
THE role of Oscillatoria for purifying freshwater reservoirs is well known. For some years now, I have been applying successfully this biological agent to ‘cleaning up’ amœba cultures. Ordinary laboratory cultures, unless rigidly controlled, tend to become choked with algæ in the course of time. It is a tiresome manipulation to separate out the amœbæ in sufficient numbers when it is desirable to make a quantity of stained preparations, or to secure the large numbers of young amœbæ which are required when a study of mitosis is being made. If, however, among the algal contents one introduces Oscillatoria, the filaments of this grow over and bind together the wheat grains and the algal contents into a cylindrical mass. The rest of the vesicle is quite free from weed; but young amœbæ, some rotifers and small flagellates creep out on to it and multiply, and so a white carpet is formed consisting mainly of amœbæ quite free from debris. These can then be pipetted off into the fixative, or used for a study of mitosis.
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TAYLOR, M. A Biological Agent for securing Large Numbers of Amœba proteus. Nature 171, 704 (1953). https://doi.org/10.1038/171704a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/171704a0
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