title: Safety, efficacy and utility of methods of transferring adhesive and cohesive Escherichia coli cells to microplates to avoid aerosols.
abstract: The virtual colony count (VCC) microbiological assay has been utilized for over a decade to measure the antimicrobial activity of peptides such as defensins and LL-37 against biosafety level (BSL)-1 and BSL-2 bacteria including Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, and Enterobacter aerogenes.  In addition, a modified pipetting technique was presented in a 2011 study of defensin activity against the BSL-3 pathogen Bacillus anthracis.  Both studies were published in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.  Here I report that the method can also detect cross-contamination caused by aerosols utilizing the VCC method of data analysis by quantitative growth kinetics (QGK).  The QGK threshold time, or T t, equivalent to the cycle time C t reported in 1996 by Heid et al., precisely identifies when wells were inoculated.
authors: University of Maryland School of Medicine, Institute of Human Virology, 725 W. Lombard St., Baltimore, MD, USA.
authors: Bryan
authors: B
authors: Ericksen
keywords: Aerobiology; Aerosols; Environmental Monitoring; Quantitative Growth Kinetics