Methicillin revelation

[David Micklem]

In article <3772755D.2BC2DBBE at purdue.edu>, Phillip San Miguel
<pmiguel at purdue.edu> wrote:
<snipped>

Given that oxacillin and nafcillin both appear to still be useful against
multi-drug-resistant staphylococcus infections (including
vancomycin-resistant strains), do you think its really a good idea to
encourage their widespread use in laboratories? Presumably there could be a
risk of accidentally selecting in the lab for resistant staph strains.

Use of carbenicillin, or plating a larger number of plates at lower density
are usually sufficient to prevent the growth of satellite colonies... I
didn't have a problem getting lawns using the gamma-delta transposon system
as described by Strathman, PNAS 88, 1247,1991, although he does (IIRC)
mention that it can be a problem if the cells are plated at too high
density.

 See eg: 
<http://www.nursespdr.com/members/database/ndrhtml/oxacillinsodium.html>
<http://www.rockefeller.edu/pubinfo/vancresist.nr.htmllark> 

(both from an Altavista search with oxacillin)).

I'm not a medic, so I'm quite prepared to be completely wrong about the
medical usefulness of nafcillin/oxacillin.

David

-- 
D.R. Micklem,                            Time flies like an arrow... 
Beckman Institute,                   Fruit flies like a banana.       
Stanford, Ca 94305 USA           Email:dmicklem at cmgm.stanford.edu
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