Description

Mycotracer is a PCR based platform to detect Mycoplasma which is a major contaminant of cell culture. 15 to 35% of cell culture worldwide were found to be contaminated with mycoplasma. It remains unnoticed in most of the culture due to its small size. The presence of mycoplasma severely affects your experimental findings by altering the gene expression profile, activation or repression of cellular pathways and affecting other physiological processes.Mycoplasma can grow at high density without any change in the media turbidity or pH of the culture media. There are more than 190 species of mycoplasma identified till date, but approximately 95% of mycoplasma contamination in cell culture is caused by eight species(3)M. arginini, M. fermentans, M. hominis, M. hyorhinis, M. orale, M. pirum, M. salivarium, and A. laidlawii.

The elimination of mycoplasma is very difficult, if not impossible, The efficiency of antibiotics based elimination of mycoplasmas is between 66 and 85 percent , that too with mycoplasma specific antibiotics. The commonly used antibiotics such as penicillin and streptomycin are not effective against mycoplasma. Further,the long term use of these antibiotics is not recommended (4,5), as it may mask the presence of low levels of mycoplasma contamination and also negatively affect the cell physiology. Antibiotics also make the mycoplasma antibiotic-resistant if used for an extended period. So, the easiest way to avoid mycoplasma contamination in cell cultures is to examine them periodically.