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Nick Kapatais

Optical Density conversion to cfu / ml

Bert Murray  Follow

The optical density measurement is the quantity of living and non-living cells in a sample. The colony forming unit measures only the viable cells in a sample. An OD 600nm is equivalent to approximately 8 x 10^8 CFU/ml. However, this is only an approximation and cannot fully take into account the dead cells the OD may be reading, it also depends on the microorganism that is being researched. A standard curve can be calculated from data, but it is quite difficult to attain an exact result.A very useful article on the correlation between the two measurements can be found here (from the Brazilian Journal of Microbiology).

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Gwydion Madawc Williams  Follow
Welcome to biology SE - links to external material that allow further reading or offer support to content are strongly encouraged hereMore
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