Low-Cost, High-Throughput, Automated Counting of Bacterial Colonies

Published

January 5, 2010

Author(s)

Matthew L. Clarke, Robert L. Burton, A. N. Hill, Maritoni A. Litorja, Moon H. Nahm, Jeeseong Hwang

Abstract

Research involving bacterial pathogens often requires enumeration of bacteria colonies. Here we present a low-cost, high-throughput colony counting system consisting of colony counting software and a consumer-grade digital camera or document scanner. We demonstrate that this software, called NICE (NIST s Integrated Colony Enumerator), can count bacterial colonies as part of a high-throughput multiplexed opsonophagocytic killing assay (MOPA), which is used to characterize pneumococcal vaccine efficacy. The results obtained with NICE correlate well with the results obtained from manual counting, with a mean difference of less than 3%. NICE is also rapid; it can count colonies from multiple reaction wells within minutes and export the results to a spreadsheet for data processing. As this program is freely available from NIST, NICE should be helpful in bacteria colony enumeration required in many microbiological studies, and in standardizing colony counting methods.

Citation

Cytometry Part A

Volume

77A

Issue

8

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

Local Download

Keywords

bacteria, colony counting, imaging, MOPA, pneumoniae, software, vaccine

Citation

Clarke, M. , Burton, R. , Hill, A. , Litorja, M. , Nahm, M. and Hwang, J. (2010), Low-Cost, High-Throughput, Automated Counting of Bacterial Colonies, Cytometry Part A, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=904106 (Accessed February 10, 2025)