Optical Technology Division, Physics Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899, USA.
Cytometry A. 2010 Aug;77(8):790-7. doi: 10.1002/cyto.a.20864.
Research involving bacterial pathogens often requires enumeration of bacteria colonies. Here, we present a low-cost, high-throughput colony counting system consisting of colony counting software and a consumer-grade digital camera or document scanner. We demonstrate that this software, called "NICE" (NIST's Integrated Colony Enumerator), can count bacterial colonies as part of a high-throughput multiplexed opsonophagocytic killing assay used to characterize pneumococcal vaccine efficacy. The results obtained with NICE correlate well with the results obtained from manual counting, with a mean difference of less than 3%. NICE is also rapid; it can count colonies from multiple reaction wells within minutes and export the results to a spreadsheet for data processing. As this program is freely available from NIST, NICE should be helpful in bacteria colony enumeration required in many microbiological studies, and in standardizing colony counting methods.
涉及细菌病原体的研究通常需要对细菌菌落进行计数。在这里，我们提出了一种低成本、高通量的菌落计数系统，它由菌落计数软件和消费级数码相机或文档扫描仪组成。我们证明，这种称为“NICE”（NIST 的综合菌落计数仪）的软件可以作为高通量多重调理吞噬杀伤测定法的一部分来计数细菌菌落，该测定法用于表征肺炎球菌疫苗的功效。使用 NICE 获得的结果与手动计数获得的结果非常吻合，平均差异小于 3%。NICE 也很快；它可以在几分钟内计算出多个反应孔中的菌落，并将结果导出到电子表格中进行数据处理。由于这个程序可以从 NIST 免费获得，因此 NICE 应该有助于许多微生物学研究中所需的细菌菌落计数，并标准化菌落计数方法。
