Development of a novel selective medium for culture of Gram-negative bacteria

Objective: Although many bacterial culture media are available commercially, there is a continuous effort to develop better selective media for bacteria, which cannot be grown on existing media. While exploring antibacterial properties of clove, we observed that it has the potential to selectively inhibit growth of certain types of bacteria. This led us to do the experiments, which resulted in developing a new media which selectively allowed the growth of only Gram-negative bacteria, while inhibiting the Gram-positive bacteria. Results: Mueller Hinton Agar (MHA) was used as the base media and was modified to develop MHA-C15 (MHA containing 15% volume/volume water extract of clove). Gram-negative bacterial pathogens Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Salmonella typhimurium and Pseudomonas aeruginosa grew on MHA-C15. However, none of the major Gram-positive bacterial pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Streptococcus pyogenes, Streptococcus mutans, Bacillus spp. and Enterococcus spp. grew on it. Taken together, these findings show that MHA-C15 is a newly developed selective media for culture of Gram-negative bacteria.