Mycoplasma contaimination problem

[sarahcell]

We just confirmed mycoplasma contamination in our cultures. I just have a few questions about how to proceed. Any suggestions on how to get rid of it? How should we go about decontaiminating the lab? Which GLP can we improve? Anything else I should know, like how it has affected our past experiments, should we assume that the past experiments are a wash because of mycoplasma, some of these cells lines we've been using for years now. I know there is a product on the market called Plasmocin, anyone use this product, are you happy with it. Ideally we would like to not use anything in our cultures since they are transfected, to produce virus. Any help with this matter would be much appreciated.

[memari]

just use this
http://www.invivogen.com/normocin


-----
Babak

[mchlbrmn]

A number of years ago a published report said that an alarming percentage of tested cell lines that were being used found to be mycoplasma contaminated. I think that one explanation was that earlier models of freezing vials were used in freezers where the samples were submerged in liquid nitrogen and this led to nitrogen leaking through brittle frozen gaskets into cell samples, and taking along contaminants. In any case, I think you need not over react; you're not alone. Just take care of the problem now, and consider whether if affected earlier results, but you probably don't need to retract everything done by you, and your cells' sources, for the past decade.

I found this from a web source about mycoplasma:

Average cell culture contamination rate:
5 % in industry, 47 % in academics

(I suppose in industry they screen more regularly).

[Multiplexion]

At the bottom of this page, you can find a Mycoplasma removal protocol. However, best choice is always to discard contaminated cell lines and to start with a new batch. Good luck.