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The World of Protozoa, Rotifera, Nematoda and Oligochaeta

Ref ID : 1071

Jurgen Thiele, Otmar Honer-Schmid, Jurgen Wahl, Gertrud Kleefeld, and Joachim Schultz; A new method for axenic mass cultivation of Paramecium tetraurelia. J.Protozool. 27(1):118-121, 1980

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A method is described for the axenic mass cultivation of Paramecium tetraurelia strains 51s and 299s. The ciliate is grown in an enriched axenic medium developed by Soldo, Godoy & van Wagtendonk. Under continuous shaking on a rotary shaker, cultures were grown in one-liter Erlenmeyer flasks with 330 ml medium yield cell densities of 32,000 cells/ml and 20,000 cells/ml for strains 299s and 51s respectively. Doubling time is considerably shorter under these conditions than in the conventional static cultures. A 20-liter airlift bioreactor is described in detail which can be used successfully to obtain up to 100 g wet weight of Paramecium in a single run; in this reactor the cell density reaches 38,000 cells/ml for strains 299s, and 23,000 cells/ml for 51s. This technique should facilitate the study of minor protein components of the ciliate.