Greetings, I've been having a problem with some biological contamination in some ultra-pure acidified sucrose solutions. The pH is ~ 3.5 (phosphoric acid), the sucrose concentration is about 0.5 mg/L and I"m seeing a decay in the sucrose concentrations over 1 week @ 20 C (0.4 mg/L decay). If i raise the temp to 40 C the decay stops. The biomass within the flask are white and floating around, I've seen some attachment of the hyphae near the bottom. I can't seem to get it to grow on TSA agar. I will upload a shotty picture of the fungi, it was taken without a microscope camera (we lost it) so I apologize for the quality. I'm a chemist by training, so I'm a little out of my element here, but I would appreciate any help. Cheers, Jesse
Sadly, I've done very little microscopy, so please take my comments with a grain or many grains of salt: First, this seems too large for hyphae at 200x magnification, so I'm wondering if it is non-fungal. Second, it's usually hard to ID fungi by hyphae: If you can find any sexual or asexual reproductive structures that might help. Also, can you see any septal divisions in the hyphae? If it is fungal, hopefully there is someone in the forum who would recognize likely suspects that like the growing conditions you describe. Sorry I can't be of help, but perhaps someone else can chime in. cheers -frog
Thanks for the reply Frog, I was thinking at first that this could of been some sort of fiber from *insert anything*, however I noticed that the flasks that had the most decay developed this biomass. The flasks were sealed for basically 2 weeks in an environmental chamber, however I don't know what sort of organism would even look like this. I thought I saw a conidia on one of the fragments, looked much like a tightly packed pinecone, was bright yellow, and there was some septation inside of it, however that was only on one of the fragments (500x). But as you were saying as well, seeing those bodies at this magnification, the chances are it would be something else. I think my next step is to send some of my sample out for some enzyme testing, or endotoxin analysis for bacteria. I appreciate your time and opinion. Cheers, Jesse
