Plating bacterial cells with glass beads
Traditionally, microbial cells are plated on a petri dish using a glass rod. Look at this
youtube video. This can be very time consuming
if you have many plates to spread as they have to be spread sequentially. Alternatively,
a number of glass spheres can be added to each plate and the plate can be shaken to spread the
liquid evenly. Look at this video for a depiction of the procedure.
We use 4 mm beads, slightly smaller than the ones in the video above, I have found that 5-8 spheres does the job well.
The beads can be stored in 70% ethanol, washed and reused.