by Microbiologics | Jul 11, 2023 | Food
Food recalls demonstrate the importance of performing quality control during food testing and environmental monitoring in testing laboratories and manufacturing sites. Although QC is common during food testing, some laboratories do not apply the same quality control...
by Microbiologics | Aug 5, 2021 | Food
Operating within a narrow window of time for identifying pathogens, food safety microbiologists have the added uncertainty of cross-contamination from control strains, a common cause of false positives. The USDA Microbiology Laboratory Guidebook (MLG) and the FDA...
by Laurie Kundrat | Sep 23, 2019 | Food, Pharmaceutical, Water
Several factors can influence the accuracy of aerobic plate counts used to estimate the number of microorganisms in food, cosmetic, pharmaceutical, and household products. Below are a few best practices we recommend for achieving consistent and accurate counts. 1. ...
by Cait Laudenbach | Aug 22, 2019 | Cannabis, Clinical, Food, Pharmaceutical, Water
Gram staining is an important procedure all microbiologists should master. A laboratorian performs a Gram stain for many reasons – from screening the quality of a sputum sample to rapid presumptive diagnosis of an illness like bacterial meningitis. How to...
by Laurie Kundrat | Jul 18, 2019 | Clinical, Food, Molecular, Pharmaceutical, Water
In 2016, two biologists from Indiana University estimated that there are about a trillion species of bacteria on earth.1 With so many choices, how can a teacher select the best strains for her microbiology class? Below are a few tips for choosing and using...
by Microbiologics | May 2, 2019 | Clinical, Food, Molecular, Pharmaceutical, Water
Dear Stanley, Lately, our lab has been experiencing PCR results that don’t fit with what is expected. We will see occasional positive results in a negative sample. I think the issue could be related to contamination in the lab, but I’m not sure. Do you have any tips...
