MANUAL AND SEMIAUTOMATED MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF PENICILLIUM-CHRYSOGENUM CHEMOSTAT CULTURES

Measurement of key morphological indices of chemostat cultures of Peni cillium chrysogenum, by image analysis, was carried out manually at St rathclyde University and semi-automatically at Birmingham University u sing identical preserved samples. Using both methods, the value of the mean hyphal growth unit was found to decrease with decreasing dilutio n rate. Although similar trends were observed for data obtained at Str athclyde and Birmingham, the values of key morphological indices measu red by semi-automated analysis were consistently higher than the value s obtained by manual analysis. This discrepancy was as a result of the different analysis methods, particularly with respect to clump analys is. An electronic image transfer method is discussed which would allow analysis of a given image set at either site by either method.