Comparison of LIVE/DEAD(R) BacLight(TM) Bacterial Viability Test and alamarBlue(R) Method for Enumeration of Live and Dead Bacteria for Oral Bacterial Species.
- Author:
Yeon Hee KIM
1
;
Si Young LEE
Author Information
1. Department of Oral Microbiology, College of Dentistry, Research Institute of Oral Science, Gangneung-Wonju National University, Gangneung, 210-702, Korea. siyoung@gwnu.ac.kr
- Publication Type:Original Article
- Keywords:
Bacteria;
Fluorescence;
Resazurin;
Viridans Streptococci
- MeSH:
Bacteria;
Biofilms;
Enterococcus faecalis;
Fluorescence;
Indicators and Reagents;
Microbial Viability;
Microscopy, Confocal;
Oxazines;
Plankton;
Porphyromonas gingivalis;
Streptococcus mutans;
Streptococcus sobrinus;
Viridans Streptococci;
Xanthenes
- From:International Journal of Oral Biology
2012;37(4):197-201
- CountryRepublic of Korea
- Language:Korean
-
Abstract:
LIVE/DEAD(R) BacLight(TM) and alamarBlue(R) are fluorescent materials used for the enumeration of live and dead bacteria. LIVE/DEAD(R) BacLight(TM) is generally used for confocal microscopy applications to differentiate live from dead bacteria in a biofilm or planktonic state. AlamarBlue(R) has also been used widely to assay live and dead bacteria in a planktonic state. Whilst these materials are successfully utilized in experiments to discriminate live from dead bacteria for several species of bacteria, the application of these techniques to oral bacteria is limited to the use of LIVE/DEAD(R) BacLight(TM) in biofilm studies. In our present study, we assessed whether these two methods could enumerate live and dead oral bacterial species in a planktonic state. We tested the reagents on Streptococcus mutans, Streptococcus sobrinus, Porphyromonas gingivalis, Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans and Enterococcus faecalis and found that only LIVE/DEAD(R) BacLight(TM) could differentiate live from dead cells for all five of these oral strains. AlamarBlue(R) was not effective in this regard for P. gingivalis or A. actinomycetemcomitans. In addition, the differentiation of live and dead bacterial cells by alamarBlue(R) could not be performed for concentrations lower than 2 x 10(6) cells/ml. Our data thus indicate that LIVE/DEAD(R) BacLight(TM) is a more effective reagent for this analysis.