Making Penicillin, Part 2: Reculturing

Introduction

Once you've isolated a strain of Penicillium, you'll probably want to subculture it so you can save it for future use. Penicillium grows well on potato dextrose agar (PDA) plates. If you're pouring your own plates, see the section an autoclaving and plate pouring. Once the plate are ready, you'll want to transfer some of your original culture to the plates (see my section on aseptic streaking to single colonies).

Materials

potato dextrose agar

• poured plates
• prepared media + sterile plates
• powdered media
• agar
• dextrose (aka glucose)

water filter (optional)
inoculation loop
cheesecloth (optional)
freeze-dried P. chrysogenum (optional)
filter paper (optional)
sterile petri dish (optional)
glassine envelope 

Procedure

Figure 1: Boiling sliced potato in distilled water.

References

1. "A Simple Way to Preserve Fungal Cultures." Web log post. Cornell Mushroom Blog. Ed. Kathie T. Hodge. Cornell University, 10 Jan. 2008. Web. 18 June 2014.

2. Rafi, M., and Rahman, S. U. 2002. Isolation and identification of indigenous Penicillium chrysogenum series. Int. J. Agr. Biol. 4(4): 553-558