Culturing Mycobacteria.

Building upon the foundational research of Robert Koch, who demonstrated the ability to grow Mycobacterium tuberculosis for the first time in 1882 using media made of coagulated bovine serum, microbiologists have continued to develop new and more efficient ways to grow mycobacteria. Presently, all known mycobacterial species can be grown in the laboratory using either axenic culture techniques or in vivo passage in laboratory animals. This chapter provides conventional protocols to grow mycobacteria for diagnostic purposes directly from clinical specimens, as well as in research laboratories for scientific purposes.