Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

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

Published

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

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 March 28, 2024)
Created January 5, 2010, Updated January 27, 2020