title: Phloxine B, a versatile bacterial stain.
abstract: The data presented suggest that Phloxine B, a color additive for food, drugs, and cosmetics has a potential use as a nontoxic, faster (<2 min), inexpensive (350 tests for <1 cent material) and simpler to use alternative to Gram staining. Using Phloxine B staining it was possible to differentiate among gram-negative and gram-positive bacteria by visual determination under normal room lighting, light microscopy, fluorescence microscopy and confocal microscopy. This work demonstrated that Phloxine B can be used as a differential versatile bacterial stain and establishes a correlation between the staining properties of the dye and its bactericidal effect.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition, University of California Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA. rrasooly@whnrc.usda.gov
authors.forename: Reuven
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rasooly
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000145:classification*; D010697:Eosine I Bluish; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; D018613:Microscopy, Confocal; D008856:Microscopy, Fluorescence; D013194:Staining and Labeling / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; D010697:Eosine I Bluish