Identification of a persisting bacterial contamination of cell culture as Brevibacterium

Abstract Cell culture is an important prerequisite for many of the basic and applied researches in life sciences and contamination is a major problem faced by the researchers in maintaining healthy cell lines. We noted a dot like contamination in our THP1 cell line, which does not make the culture medium turbid as fast as other common contaminants and remains in the culture for many days before it makes the culture unusable. The contaminant was identified as a member of the genus Brevibacterium and we could find that the antibiotic rifampicin effectively suppresses the growth of the bacterium.