Jun 27, 2025
Culture of Clinical Specimens for the Isolation of Corynebacterium spp.
- Sylvain Brisse1,
- Edgar Badell1
- 1Institut Pasteur
Protocol Citation: Sylvain Brisse, Edgar Badell 2025. Culture of Clinical Specimens for the Isolation of Corynebacterium spp.. protocols.io https://dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.14egnyp1mv5d/v1
License: This is an open access protocol distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited
Protocol status: Working
We use this protocol and it's working
Created: June 25, 2025
Last Modified: June 27, 2025
Protocol Integer ID: 221027
Keywords: isolating corynebacterium spp, isolation of corynebacterium spp, corynebacterium spp, use of fosfomycin disk, fosfomycin disk, culture of clinical specimen, clinical specimen, specimen
Abstract
This protocol describes the use of fosfomycin disks for isolating Corynebacterium spp. from clinical specimens.
Materials
- Columbia agar supplemented with 5% sheep blood
- Fosfomycin disks - 200 µg
Troubleshooting
Procedure
Inoculate swabs and/or tissue fragments onto Columbia agar supplemented with 5% sheep blood.
Place five fosfomycin disks (200 µg each) on each plate, positioning them as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Fosfomycin disk placement for the isolation of Corynebacteria.
Incubate plates for 18–24 h at approximately 35 °C (range 34–38 °C).
Reading
After incubation, examine the plates. Any colonies growing in proximity of the fosfomycin disks (Figure 2) should be subcultured onto a fresh agar plate and identified—preferably by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry.
Figure 2. Example of colonies growing close to fosfomycin disks (marked by green arrows), that should be subcultured on fresh agar for identification.