Westcott Microbiology Laboratory Practice Exam

Transfer steps involve moving living cells from one vessel to another to propagate or maintain a culture. In typical microbiology lab protocols, this means transferring microbial cells that can grow in fresh media, with bacteria being the primary organism handled during these transfers. Fungi can be moved in some contexts, but many basic transfer steps focus on bacteria because they are the standard model for culture propagation. Viruses require host cells and more specialized handling, so they aren’t described by simple transfer between media. Proteins are molecules, not cells, so they aren’t what’s being moved in these transfer steps. So the material being transferred is bacteria.