Your Experience Matters

Having never used a Whitley Workstation before, Asha Guraka, PhD researcher at the University of Derby, kindly agreed to answer a series of questions about her experience with the Whitley A35 Anaerobic Workstation, allowing us to see how she used the workstation and her evaluation of its overall performance.

What did you perform inside the A35 Workstation?

Inside the Whitley A35 Workstation, we routinely isolated bacteria from clinical specimens, particularly human faecal samples, under strict anaerobic conditions to ensure the viability of obligate anaerobes. We also conducted bacterial identification procedures, including various biochemical tests, which greatly benefited from the workstation’s stable and oxygen-free environment. These procedures were essential for accurately characterising the dominant gut microbiota. While we did not perform culture of existing strains or antimicrobial susceptibility testing within the workstation, the setup was primarily utilised for primary isolation and identification workflows.

Does your Whitley Workstation make your work easier to perform or improve the results?

The Whitley A35 Workstation greatly improved the isolation and identification of major gut bacteria from human faecal samples. It offered a highly regulated anaerobic environment that optimised growth conditions for strict anaerobes, resulting in better culture yield and viability. The consistent, oxygen-free setting within the workstation facilitated precise biochemical characterisation and reproducible identification of bacterial isolates, boosting both the efficiency and reliability of microbiological analyses.

Which features of the workstation do you and your colleagues consider to be most useful?

The Whitley A35 Workstation offers significant advantages, including precise atmospheric regulation, an airlock mechanism, and integrated management of both catalysts and humidity. These features ensured a consistently stable anaerobic environment, which is crucial for culturing anaerobic gut bacteria. Additionally, its spacious work area and design facilitate efficient sample handling and manipulation while preserving anaerobic conditions. Furthermore, the workstation's capabilities for real-time monitoring and data logging enhance the reproducibility and traceability of experiments, aspects that are highly valued by our research team.

If you have used anaerobic workstations from other manufacturers, what do you think about them in comparison with your Whitley Workstation?  

We have not used anaerobic workstations from other manufacturers, so we are unable to provide a direct comparison. However, based on our experience with the Whitley A35 Workstation, it has consistently delivered high-quality anaerobic conditions, excellent bacterial growth performance, and user-friendly operation. Its reliability and efficient gas usage have fully met our research and operational needs, eliminating the necessity to explore alternative systems.

Overall, how would you describe your research experience?

Alongside Dr. Ali Kermanizdeh, Director of Studies, I had the opportunity to utilise the Whitley A35 Workstation during my PhD research. We developed an optimised protocol for bacterial metabolite extractions, “Co-Culture of Gut Bacteria and Metabolite Extraction Using Fast Vacuum Filtration and Centrifugation", which was recently published in Methods and Protocols (MDPI). The Whitley A35 Workstation played a crucial role in maintaining the precise anaerobic conditions essential for our work with obligate anaerobic gut bacteria. Its reliable oxygen-free environment ensured the bacteria's survival and optimal metabolic activity, which was critical for the accurate extraction and subsequent analysis of metabolites. The workstation's user-friendly design, along with its efficient gas usage, made it an invaluable tool, significantly improving the reproducibility and efficiency of our experimental processes.

This research not only validated a robust protocol for co-culturing anaerobic gut bacteria and metabolite extraction but also set the stage for future studies into gut microbiome dynamics and their role in health. Looking ahead, we are excited to expand our research by integrating omics techniques to explore the complexities of bacterial interactions and their impact on health outcomes. We also aim to investigate more gut bacterial interspecies interactions via co-culturing, particularly targeting how different microbial communities communicate and collaborate within the gut environment. The Whitley A35 Workstation remains essential to our research, and we anticipate it will continue to play a vital role in all our future microbiological studies.

We thank Asha for providing such a detailed insight into her use of the Whitley A35 Workstation and wish her and her team all the best in their future studies.

If you’re interested in our anaerobic workstation range, please see the products below or contact us at sales@dwscientific.co.uk