Creating Perfect Growth Conditions with Tecan’s Infinite® M200 PRO

Tecan’s Infinite® M200 PRO microplate reader is helping researchers at the University of Salzburg, Austria, to monitor cell growth of microaerophilic bacteria.

Univ-Prof Dr Silja Wessler, Professor in Microbiology, explained: “We research a wide range of cellular signal transduction pathways initiated by the interaction of host cells with pathogens like Helicobacter pylori, and were approached to beta test the new Gas Control Module (GCM™) for the Infinite M200 PRO. The instrument’s potential was soon very clear, and we bought a system almost straightaway. We use a variety of techniques for our work, including culturing of microaerophilic organisms, immunofluorescence, cytokine ELISAs, reporter gene assays and cell migration assays and, because the Tecan reader is so flexible, we can use it for virtually all of our experiments.”

“We need to culture and incubate bacteria under microaerophilic conditions, as well as to monitor migration of host cells in a defined atmosphere, and the ability to adapt atmospheric conditions within the reader has been a huge advantage. We simply suspend the cells in the relevant media for each bacterium, pipette them into 96-well plates in very small volumes, usually 200 µl, and begin to measure for growth. We can create the exact atmosphere each bacterium needs, which is also helpful in our cell biology assays. Before we had the Infinite M200 PRO, there was a clear gap in our equipment, but now we have everything we need for our research.”