Types
Like other growth media, the formulations of agar used in plates may be classified as either "defined" or "undefined"; defined medium is synthesized from individual chemicals required by the organism so that the exact molecular composition is known, whereas undefined medium is made from natural products such as yeast extract, where the precise composition is unknown.
Agar plates may be formulated as either permissive, with the intent of allowing the growth of whatever organisms are present, or restrictive or selective, with the intent of only allowing growth a particular subset of those organisms. This may take the form of a nutritional requirement, for instance providing a particular compound such as lactose as the only source of carbon and thereby selecting only organisms which can metabolize that compound, or by including a particular antibiotic or other substance in order to select only organisms which are resistant to that substance. This correlates to some degree with defined and undefined media; undefined media, made from natural products and containing an unknown combination of very many organic molecules, is typically more permissive in terms of supplying the needs of a wider variety of organisms, while defined media can be precisely tailored to select organisms with specific properties.
Agar plates may also be indicator plates, in which the organisms are not selected on the basis of growth, but are instead distinguished by a color change in some colonies, typically caused by the action of an enzyme on some compound added to the media.
Some commonly used agar plate types are:
Read more about this topic: Agar Plate
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