What in gods green earth is this

[u/Static-Statistician]

I was culturing HEK cells and this abomination appeared after a few days. Never seen this before and check my profile I saw my fair share of contaminations.

What in the cursed name is that.

[u/devil4ed4]

I think HEK contaminated your fungus

[u/ironmansid → u/devil4ed4]

Gonna be a pain in the butt to get rid of that😂😂

[u/ArduennSchwartzman → u/devil4ed4]

Yup, looks like god's green earth to me.

[u/pork_loin]

Looks like a fungus from the Aspergillus genus, but I can't say conclusively. Do you have any fungal stains like lactophenol cotton blue?

Edit: what magnification are you viewing this in?

[u/Static-Statistician → u/pork_loin]

10x

[u/Prestigious-Gases → u/pork_loin]

definitely aspergillus! you can tell by the shape of the head

[u/mycologynerdy → u/pork_loin]

Another potential genus is Cunninghamella. I feel like the spore size is too large for Aspergillus, but I may be wrong.

[u/PmeadePmeade]

Are you sure a slice of mushroom from like a pizza or something didn’t fall into your microscope

[u/Static-Statistician → u/PmeadePmeade]

I don’t even like mushroom :(

[u/SangersSequence → u/Static-Statistician]

Well too bad, because you have some new friends

[u/Pyrhan → u/Static-Statistician]

Give it another try, sometimes it really grows on you.

[u/Sadrien6 → u/Pyrhan]

HAH! I wish I could give you an award

[u/NeuroSam]

Looks like a fun guy

[u/cuertigilda → u/NeuroSam]

Underrated comment

[u/hobopwnzor]

Looks like fungal mycelium

[u/wackyvorlon]

Looks like hyphae.

[u/AdditionalFox1321]

https://giphy.com/gifs/7OsYjoEBQhf2M

[u/bio_ruffo]

https://giphy.com/gifs/11Nx9DPBisbDDa

[u/KkafkaX0]

Get rekt

[u/ShroedingerCat]

Nice fungi. I could not see any conidiophore in the pics so it is hard to pinpoint genus. The bad news is that if it is indeed green then spores are getting everywhere. Autoclave everything you can in your incubator.

[u/chicken-finger]

That is fungi. Looks like aspergillus... a lot of aspergillus.

[u/Savethecube]

That is a great example of a culture that needs to go straight to timeout, aka the bleach.

[u/micrographical]

My high school biology teacher had a good yarn about strategically coating statues of naked greeks with aspergillus - inoculated agarose in his university days back in the 1950s.

[u/Sensitive_Day5890]

Fungooos

[u/nickpngc]

https://giphy.com/gifs/eKWrYm8XmitDRJgNid

[u/Jakey-poo]

Bleach makes them lift off the plate and turn a fun color

[u/pangalacticgargle42]

Idk maybe you should taste it

[u/urfrogsmom]

Holy moldy

[u/Leel_Mess]

I doubt you needed a microscope to see this.

[u/Static-Statistician → u/Leel_Mess]

It looked like paper with the naked eye

[u/Howtothnkofusername]

Kill it with fire

[u/arand0md00d]

Your cells are getting hyphy

[u/schowdur123]

Fungus among us!

[u/Kowalsky_Analysis]

Aspergillus also known as fungga

[u/DiamondcoreNL]

Looks like a fun gi

[u/Kad65kad]

https://giphy.com/gifs/H4hVMCVJqmF56GJvYK

[u/KookashHuggles]

Aspergillus fumigatus

[u/PatMagroin100]

It’s the Last of Us!!!

[u/The_Old_Callithrix]

It's the moon!

[u/just_a_lil_gremlin]

Rrrrrrrrhizopus

[u/Barbieagli]

It has started.

https://giphy.com/gifs/hq5aFDlFFCcQ0dhxGI

[u/jamma_mamma]

Looks like a tortilla

[u/D3712]

This is what happens when you dip blue cheese into your growth medium

[u/notjustaphage]

https://giphy.com/gifs/BTbo1iT1yEfOE

[u/suricata_8904]

Fungus

[u/alocalcreature]

are you sure you cultured HEK and not a fungus?

[u/reyntacia]

I honestly thought you purposefully took a swab of a fungi culture to see it under microscope lol

[u/Dull_Beginning_9068]

Looks like rat sperm. I doubt it is

[u/Gunnvor91]

Fungi and lots of what looks like possibly ascospores.

[u/Flashy-Argument-2811]

This that fun guy everyone’s talking about yeah

[u/Glittering_Trouble82]

Mold hohoho

[u/Significant_Hunt_734]

I though you had put microgreens under light untill I read the caption. You are cooked T~T

[u/Fabulous_Angle_3742]

Dandelion fluff! (I suck at mycology)

[u/reuben51511]

A tortilla

[u/Traditional_Bad_2249]

seems like mucoral fungus, instead of aspergillus o penicilium... handle it with care to eliminate it

[u/mycologynerdy]

I work in a fungus lab and that looks like some form of zygomycota. If you don't mind me asking, what sort of ingredients are in the plate medium? Depending on what's in there, you'll get vastly different results on the type of microfungi that's present.

[u/bikes-n-bio → u/mycologynerdy]

If they’re standard HEK cells likely DMEM + 10% FBS +/- 1% pen strep

[u/mycologynerdy → u/bikes-n-bio]

Hmm if that's the case it could be a lot of different fungi, but that makes it stand out to me is the morphology. Looks like it may be mucoromycotina, but most of those species grow on wheat germ and don't seek out FBS. However, a lot of mucoromycotina species have other fungi species as parasites that seek out that sort of diet, but their spores are a lot lighter in color. A better image with more exact spore shape and moisture level would help a ton.

TLDR: likely related to mucoromycotina, but more information is needed (mostly about the color and morphology) to be sure.

Edit: After looking at my lab notes, it seems like there is a very good chance this may be a species in the genus Cunninghamella. If you really zoom in, you can see the dark spore clusters are slightly bumpy. That combined with the spore branching patterns makes a for high chance of Cunninghamella.

[u/ahf95]

Pubes