Disk Diffusion Assay to Assess the Antimicrobial Activity of Marine Algal Extracts

Citation

Desbois AP & Smith VJ (2015) Disk Diffusion Assay to Assess the Antimicrobial Activity of Marine Algal Extracts. In: Stengel DB & Connan S (eds.) Natural Products From Marine Algae. Methods in Molecular Biology, 1308. New York: Springer, pp. 403-410. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2684-8_25

Abstract
Marine algae are a relatively untapped source of bioactive natural products, including those with antimicrobial activities. The ability to assess the antimicrobial activity of cell extracts derived from algal cultures is vital to identifying species that may produce useful novel antibiotics. One assay that is used widely for this purpose is the disk diffusion assay due to its simplicity, rapidity, and low cost. Moreover, this assay gives output data that are easy to interpret and can be used to screen many samples at once irrespective of the solvent used during preparation. In this chapter, a step-by-step protocol for performing a disk diffusion assay is described. The assay is particularly well suited to testing algal cell extracts and fractions resulting from separation through bioassay-guided approaches.

Keywords
Antibacterial; Antibiotic; Bactericidal; Bioassay-guided fractionation; Natural products

People

Dr Andrew Desbois

Senior Lecturer, Institute of Aquaculture