Mycoplasma Detection & Prevention

Mycoplasma - Products for Detection, Removal and Prevention

Mycoplasma Contamination in Cell Cultures

One of the most common contaminants present in cell culture laboratories are mycoplasma. A conservative estimate states that between 15-35% of all continuous cell cultures are contaminated with mycoplasma, some estimates are even higher (up to 80% in some countries).

Mycoplasma Effects on Your Cell Culture

Typical routes of infection are cross-contamination from untested infected cells (e.g. via aerosols generated during pipetting, use of same media bottles, handling of more than one cell type at one time), contaminated materials, contaminated donor tissue (<1%) or direct infectionfrom the researcher. The primary source is normally cross-contamination from infected cultures. Mycoplasma grow slowly and do not kill the cells outright but affect various cellular parameters 1,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 (see figure). Thus, mycoplasma contaminations can seriously impact thereliability, reproducibility, and consistency of experimental results, representing a major problem for basic research as well as for the manufacturing of bioproducts. Standard testing for mycoplasma is an important quality control.

Mycoplasma The Invisible Enemy

Even at very high concentrations (> 107 cfu/ml) mycoplasma are not visible by microscopy. They do not cause visible changes in the growth media that are commonly associated with bacterial and fungal contamination, such a turbidity or pH changes. Therefore contaminations are verydifficult to detect and the presence of mycoplasma can remain undiscovered for months. As mycoplasma compete with cells for the nutrients in culture media, one of the first visible signs is a slowdown in cell proliferation. Other indications of contamination include cell aggregation,morphological changes or poor transfection efficiencies with cells that originally transfected well.

Mycoplasma Detection, Elimination & Prevention Reagents

Lonza provides a powerful product offering for reliable detection and successful elimination and prevention of mycoplasma contaminations:

Detection - Easily detect mycoplasma using the MycoAlert™ PLUS Mycoplasma Detection Kit with your own luminometer or our single-tube Lucetta™ Luminometer tailor-made with a MycoAlert™ Protocol wizard
Elimination - Efficiently eliminate mycoplasma with the MycoZap™ Elimination Reagent
Prevention - Reliably prevent mycoplasma with our MycoZap™ Antibiotics