Live & Dead Bacterial Viability and Counting Kit

MCE Live & Dead Bacterial Viability and Counting Kit is based on dual-fluorescence staining technology, which can effectively differentiate live bacteria from dead bacteria and enable quantitative detection using flow cytometry. It can also be used for quantitative analysis of various bacterial mixtures.

The detection principle is as follows: the green nucleic acid dye, which has membrane permeability, can easily penetrate both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria, emitting a bright green fluorescence signal, and can stain both live and dead bacteria. The non-membrane-permeable red dye, PI, can only stain dead bacteria with compromised cell membranes, emitting red fluorescence. With the appropriate mixture of the green nucleic acid dye and PI dye, bacteria with intact cell membranes emit bright green fluorescence, whereas bacteria with damaged cell membranes exhibit significant reduction in green fluorescence and emit stronger red fluorescence. By adding an appropriate amount of detection microsphere before analyzing the sample on a flow cytometer, dual-fluorescence staining flow cytometry can be used to detect the concentration of both live and dead bacteria. Both the green nucleic acid dye and propidium iodide dye are efficiently excited by the 488 nmspectral line of the argon-ion laser found in many flow cytometers, with the fluorescence signals detected in the green and red channels, respectively. Tthe background remains virtually non-fluorescent.

MCE Live & Dead Bacterial Viability and Counting Kit has been tested at most bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, Bacillus cereus, Bacillus subtilis, Clostridium perfringens, Mycobacterium phlei, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumonia, Micrococcus luteus, Pseudomonas syringae, Staphylococcus aureus, and Streptococcus pyogenes. This kit (100 T) contains sufficient material to perform approximately 100 individual assays by flow cytometry.