I agree with Dana.  In addition to making great gram controls, ask your
micro department about making fungal controls for you also.  i just made
some excellent controls from a bread mold on sheep's blood agar.  the mold
grew extremely well (the micro people called it a "lid lifter" because it is
so florid that it literally lifted the lid on a petri dish.  i just fixed
the plates (with good old 10% NBF) in a hood for a couple of days, then
sliced up the agar and made fungus sandwiches (well, it was a bread mold) by
placing the upper surfaces face to face.  i wrapped these in lens paper,
cassetted them and processed as usual.  i then embedded on edge.  the best
areas were not the surface growths, but rather where the fungi  had grown
deep into the agar. very nice hyphae and spores.

rob

-----Original Message-----
From: DDittus787@aol.com [mailto:DDittus787@aol.com]
Sent: March 11, 2000 8:52 AM
To: SEENRD@aol.com; histonet@pathology.swmed.edu
Subject: Re: Bacteria controls


If you have a micro lab handy, they can grow an additional gram pos and gram
neg cultures for you, place in cell media , or cut out from agar, spin to
form pellet, process in tissue processor and voila , cut as control or embed
in a tissue before process, such as colon, they love those little buggers.
                                                 dana