Quantitative microbiology techniques

Before electrochemical techniques are used in the evaluation of any situation involving microbes, tihe test protocol must receive considerable review by personnel quite experienced in both electrochemical testing and microbiologically influenced corrosion. It must be demonstrated that the method is capable of detecting and in some cases quantitatively measuring corrosion influenced by microbes. 

The establishment of quantitative methods for the determination of vitamins in body fluids and tissues by microbiological assay techniques should stimulate the search for the significance of vitamins in disease, not only in nutritional deficiency, but in the much wider field of all metabolic disturbances. Functional vitamin deficiencies are produced by malabsorption, by inhibitors of the vitamin function through products of the body, and particularly through drugs and other toxic substances. Vitamin deficiencies may be relative deficiencies whenever an individual s metabolism is deranged so as to require enhanced quantities of a given vitamin to cure or to counteract certain symptoms as, e.g., in Darier s disease (keratosis follicularis) (P2a). 

Although vitamins can be determined, both qualitatively and quantitatively, by MS, routine analysis is usually best conducted by other means (e.g., HPLC with ultraviolet (UV) or fluorescence detection, immunoassay methods, or microbiological methods). Analytically, MS does have an important role as a reference technique, especially when used in isotope... 

In industrial production quantitative analysis of the microbiological burden of the product is carried out before and after every micro-organism reducing step. Rapid microbiological methods (RMM), such as ATP-bioluminescence are capable of producing results in real time, since traditional culture-based microbiological analysis techniques take at least several days to get a result [38, 39], see also Sect. 19.6.5... 

Determination of phosphorus and nitrogen content was always important in nucleic acid analysis. Purines and pyrimidines in nucleic acid hydrolysates were identified and determined quantitatively by isolation on a small scale and also with the help of various colour reactions, polarography and microbiological methods. These techniques are, almost without exception, only of historical interest today. 

Currently used methods for quantitative estimation of the vitamin in foods and feeds still rely mainly on microbiological assay procedures. Some other techniques, especially the sensitive radioimmunoassay procedures, have also been applied on a routine basis. Other chromatographic techniques, such as thin-layer chromatography and ion exchange chromatography, remain valuable particularly for qualitative analysis and preparative purposes. 

Hunik JH, van den Hoogen MP, de Boer W, Smit M, Tramper J. Quantitative determination of the spatial distribution of nitrosomonas europaea and nitro-bacter agilis cells immobilized in k-carrageenan gel beads by a specific fluorescent-antibody labelling technique. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 1993 59 1951-4. 

Hunik, J. H., van den Hoogen, M. P, de Boer, W, et al.. Quantitative Determination of the Spatial Distribution of Nitrosomonas europaea and Nitrobacter agilis Cells Immobilized in k-Carrageenan Gel Beads by a Specific Fluorescent-Antibody Labelling Technique, Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 59 1951-1954 (1993). 

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