MicroMPN

MicroMPN estimates the most probable number (MPN) of viable bacteria from microplate assays to quantify pathogen viability and microbial suppression in mixed communities.

Key Features:

• High-Throughput Capability: Processes microplate assays to enable rapid screening of microbial communities using replicated dilutions.
• Fluorescent Labeling Integration (fluorMPN): Incorporates a fluorescently labeled pathogen (fluorMPN) signal to differentiate viable target pathogens from non-target or non-viable microbes.
• Instrumentation Compatibility: Accepts optical readings from plate readers and is compatible with liquid-handling robotics for automated sample handling and data acquisition.
• MPN Calculation: Computes MPN values from presence/absence and optical data derived from 96- and 384-well microplate formats.

Scientific Applications:

• Microbial suppression screening: Quantifies pathogen viability within synthetic bacterial communities to assess suppressive interactions.
• Soil pathogen studies: Identifies microbial consortia that reduce pathogen levels in complex matrices such as soil.
• Inoculant and probiotic development: Ranks candidate microbial inoculates or probiotics for control of soil-borne pathogens based on viable pathogen counts.

Methodology:

Analyzes in vitro serial dilutions with replication by recording presence/absence of growth across wells, combines these observations with optical readings from a plate reader to estimate MPN, and requires a Wellmap TOML plate layout file and a CSV file of optical values as inputs.