Use of hydrogen peroxide treatment and crystal violet agar plates for selective recovery of bacteriophages from natural environments.

Hydrogen peroxide inactivated bacteriophages and bacteria at different rates. A concentration of 0.1% hydrogen peroxide reduced the numbers of several bacteria by an average of 94% but caused an average of 25% inactivation in the numbers of bacteriophages tested. Treating natural samples with hydrogen peroxide selectively reduced the indigenous bacterial flora and permitted better visualization of plaques of lawns of Escherichia coli C-3000. In some cases indigenous gram-positive bacteria were relatively resistant to hydrogen peroxide, but their growth could be limited by incorporation of crystal violet into the bottom agar used for plaque assays. The use of hydrogen peroxide treatment and crystal violet-containing plates permitted recovery of more phages from natural samples than did other procedures, such as chloroform pretreatment or the use of selective plating agar such as EC medium.