Phloxine B, a versatile bacterial stain
Correspondence: Reuven Rasooly, Department of Nutrition, University of California Davis, 430 West Health Sciences Drive Davis, CA 95616, USA. Tel.: +1 530 752 9469; fax: +1 530 752 5295; e-mail: [email protected]
Editor: Alex van Belkum
Abstract
The data presented suggest that Phloxine B, a color additive for food, drugs, and cosmetics has a potential use as a nontoxic, faster (<2 min), inexpensive (350 tests for <1 cent material) and simpler to use alternative to Gram staining. Using Phloxine B staining it was possible to differentiate among Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria by visual determination under normal room lighting, light microscopy, fluorescence microscopy and confocal microscopy. This work demonstrated that Phloxine B can be used as a differential versatile bacterial stain and establishes a correlation between the staining properties of the dye and its bactericidal effect.
