More answers::

To Xin Yi:
Upon consulting my mentor there, I found out that it is not possible to tell you the 'common' colours of moulds as different moulds express a different colour. Even as the mould grows, the colour may change. For e.g Aspergillus spp. may first appear white, then as it grows, turn to any shade of green, yellow, oange, brown or black, depending on its species. Thus, colour of the mould is used as a guide and not a confirmatory test for identification of mould.

To Leslie:
Err.. yes. In that fungus lab, only fungus identification is carried out. Should there be any bacteria present, they will report 'bacterial growth' and let the doctor decide whether a seond specimen should be sent for bacterial culture etc. The fungus lab will not undergo the entire process of identifying what type of bacteria it is.

As for what plate to use, it depends on what type of specimen it is. For example:
- Nails, skin scrapping: SDC + AA plates are used.
- Fluids, brain and oral cavity: SDA + SDC tubes are used.
- Tissue: SDA + SDC + BHIA + BHIB + CG tubes are used.

To Farhana:
Pseudohyphae are long branching filamentous cells of fungus, that are separated by cross-walls known as septa. These are normall(Look at the long strands of cells. watch out for the cross-walls)


http://www.uni-duesseldorf.de/WWW/MathNat/mikrobio/ernst/interest-Dateien/intere2.gif

Blastoconidia are yeast cells, thus they are not found in moulds. These cells reproduce by budding. Budding means that the parent blastoconidia separates to form a daughter cell.


http://bugs.bio.usyd.edu.au/Mycology/images/Topics/StructureFunction/buddingYeastCells.jpg

To Jean:
OOpps. should have defined the terms. These terms actually describes the gram-morphology of the organism.
- GNB: Gram-negative bacilli
- GPC: Gram-positive cocci


All righty. Hope all questions are answered in the best possible way =)!

Hope it helped!

-Li Ping-
TG 02