Mycoplasma – Products for Detection and Removal

Typical routes of infection are cross-contamination from untested infected cells (e.g. via aerosols generated during pipetting, use of same media bottles, handling of more than one cell type at one time), contaminated materials, contaminated donor tissue (<1%) or direct infection from the researcher. The primary source is normally cross-contamination from infected cultures. Mycoplasma grow slowly and do not kill the cells outright but affect various cellular parameters 1,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 (see figure). Thus, mycoplasma contaminations can seriously impact the reliability, reproducibility, and consistency of experimental results, representing a major problem for basic research as well as for the manufacturing of bioproducts. Standard testing for mycoplasma is an important quality control.

Mycoplasma – The Invisible Enemy

Even at very high concentrations (>107cfu/ml) mycoplasma are not visible by microscopy. They do not cause visible changes in the growth media that are commonly associated with bacterial and fungal contamination, such a turbidity or pH changes1.   Therefore contaminations are very difficult to detect and the presence of mycoplasma can remain undiscovered for months. As mycoplasma compete with cells for the nutrients in culture media, one of the first visible signs is a slowdown in cell proliferation. Other indications of contamination include cell aggregation, morphological changes or poor transfection efficiencies with cells that originally transfected well.

文章引自google.com   NCBI