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Making fly food for drosophila research

29th May 2014 14:07 by Anonymous (not verified)

5

Here at the Faculty of Life Sciences in the University of Manchester we have a number of researchers using Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism.  Our media staff make fly food in a pressurised vessel, bringing it up to 99C under constant mechanical stirring before cooling it and adding preservatives.  The recipe we use produces a highly viscous liquid that has proved the death of many stirring mechanisms.  We are now in the process of replacing our media maker and have been wrestling with the problem that a pressurised vessel means that the stirring has to be done through indirect magnetic induction, which seems more prone to mechanical breakdown, whereas a non-pressurised vessel means you can have a directly-driven stronger stirring mechanism but you then run the risk of fluid loss through evaporation or extremely vigorous boiling, which often overboils the vessel.

Our recipe is:

Total Volume 10.00 l
Water 8.70 l
Yeast 434.78 g
Glucose 689.57 g
Agar 72.17 g
Maize 626.09 g
Propionic Acid 26.09 ml
Nipagin 234.78 ml

How does this compare to anyone else's recipe?  What mechanical solution do you use, and what volume of vials or bottles do you produce in a week?

 

Thanks,

Geoff Blunt

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Greg_A (not verified)

Hi Geoff,

We provide two sizes to our researchers,  in 50 ml vials we use 9.5ml of food and in 500ml bottles we use 72ml of food. The media kitchen makes between 30-40 litres each week in a big old pot and it’s manually stirred with a wooden spoon (which is also was how it was made back at Warwick University when I worked there a few years ago), not magnetically stirred in a mediaclave.

The recipe is the Dundee Formula:

Water 10 litres
Live Yeast 57g
Glucose 786g
Agar 107g
Maize 714g
Propionic Acid 32 ml
Nipagin 27g equivalent dissolved in ethanol and added when cooling

Regards,
Greg.

Greg Anderson
Centre Laboratory Manager
Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology
University Of Edinburgh

geoffblunt (not verified)

Hi Greg,

 

That's really interesting!  We use 10x more yeast but all the other amounts are similar.  I wonder if an extra zero has been added to our recipe over the years?  As we make between 200-400L a week we have used the stirring autoclaves for about 10 years.  Sadly, the model we've used has been discontinued and finding a suitable replacement is proving tricky - I'll let you know how we get on.

 

Thanks,

Geoff

Greg_A (not verified)

Hi Geoff,

 

I'm guessing you had a New Brunswick media autoclave, which they discontinued a few years ago? We replaced ours with an Integra Mediaclave a couple of years ago bought from SLS but we've never used it or New Brunswick for fly food.

 

Regards,

Greg.

Noggin (not verified)

Hi Reply from our fly tech Tanya :-)

We purchased a KET-T-6 Manitowoc Cleveland Electric Steam Kettle from ScoMac Catering Equipment Limited, to make our drosophila media. The kettle is steam jacketed which means it heats evenly from all sides giving uniform heating and faster cooking times. Media can be made in around 1 hour and if you don’t have time to dispense the food, it will hold without overcooking, spoilage or burning until you are ready to use it.  According to the manual this Kettle has a capacity of 23 Litres, but we have found with the fly media that 14L is the maximum it will hold, as when the media reaches boiling point it has a tendency to boil over. The disadvantage is that there is no stirring mechanism within the kettle, so we stir the food manually for around 10 minutes until the media reaches boiling point, then it’s left simmering for 15 minutes before being switched off and left to cool for around 30 minutes or so.

On average we make 12 Litres of fly media weekly.  This amount will fill around Ten, 10 x 10 trays of Large vials (28.5 x 95MM)

Our Corn meal recipe has similar ingredients and amounts to the one mentioned below:

Per Litre

Corn Meal                   50g
Brewer’s yeast            50g
Glucose                       80g
Agar                            10g
H2O                            1L

Upon cooling we add 7g of baker’s yeast in 40 mls of water, which has been boiled in a microwave, also 27 mls of Nipagen .

 

Hope this helps

 

Tanya

ashleyvictoria373 (not verified)

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