Question

A swollen can of chicken soup is examined by public health laboratory and found to contain large numbers of gram negative h2s bacilli. which biochemical tests would you perform to identify the genus of the contaminant? justify your test choices.

Answer 1

Possible contaminate will be Proteus or Salmonella. To differentiate the two genera urease test can be accomplished. However, urease test, Proteus will produce a positive test result.

This test can be done to determine the ability of an organism to split urea. The principle of urease test is that urea is the product of decarboxylation of amino acid. Splitting of urea via hydrolysis will produce ammnonia and CO2. The CO2 produce allows the formation of bubbles.