Culturing Marine Protozoa — Session Summary

Abstract

Andrew Cowling introduced the session and outlined general aspects of the routine maintenance of marine protozoa in long-term culture. There are three principle methods available for maintaining protist strains in a laboratory or an established collection: serial cultivation, continuous cultivation or cryopreservation. The latter method is arguably the best means to achieve genetic stability of strains maintained over time, but have yet to be successfully applied to most protozoa. The underlying principles of cultivation — enrichment and isolation from field samples, development of optimal culture media, and the establishment of ‘permanent’ clones or species’ populations in culture — were illustrated with reference to methods employed for heterotrophic, free-living marine gymnamoebae and phagotrophic flagellate strains maintained at the Culture Collection of Algae and Protozoa (CCAP). both gnotobiotic and monoxenic cultures of protists have been established at CCAP using the associated techniques of antibiotic washes, and agar block or inoculation wire transfers. Examples of these simple and adaptable techniques were described.